Get your paper accepted faster: Responding to reviewers’ comments

Getting your manuscript accepted at a journal can typically take one to three rounds of back and forth with reviewers, each round taking one to three months. In my experience as Editor, sometimes the process could go faster because of things that the author could have done better or done differently when writing their responses to the reviewers’ comments.

Perhaps the easiest way to see how this might work is to put yourself in the reviewers’ shoes. If you were the reviewer on a manuscript and spent 10 hours* reading the manuscript and writing up your review, you would probably want to see these three things from the author.

1. Acknowledgement that they read and correctly understood your comment.
2. Acknowledgement that they took your comment seriously, even if they disagreed with it.
3. Some response to the comment in the “response to reviewers” document, as well as some fix or revision in the revised manuscript.

The exchange between authors and reviewers can go off the rails when the author fails in one or more of these three things. Let’s look at what authors can do to make the “responding to reviewers” process smoother and faster.

Authors should do their best to ensure that they understood the reviewers’ comments. Even if the comment is sometimes unclear, it may be useful to ask the Editor for clarification. You could also respond, “If I understood what you are saying, then you mean….”

Here is a proposed framework by which you should be responding to the reviewers’ concerns.

1. Acknowledge that you agree or disagree with the basis of the reviewer’s concern.
2. If you agree, say what you have done to the manuscript to revise it in accordance with the reviewer’s wishes.
3. If you disagree, provide an argument for why you believe the reviewer is wrong or has misinterpreted the manuscript.
4. Finish with a clear statement that you acted on their concern, either something like “No revision to the manuscript.” or, preferably, some revision to the manuscript so that future readers will not ask the same questions as the reviewer.

Make sure that you take the reviewers’ comments seriously. Don’t dismiss the reviewer. Work with the reviewer to help them understand the source of their concern. If it is a genuine misunderstanding from the lack of clarity in your writing, apologize and revise your manuscript so that other readers don’t read the manuscript in the same way.

Don’t write vague responses such as “The manuscript has been revised” or “The introduction has been rewritten”. These statements don’t say what or where the revisions have been made. Don’t make reviewers track down where in the manuscript those changes are or make them wonder if the substance of their concern is addressed. Make it clear to them where you have responded and how. For example, the decision letters that AMS journals send out specifically states: “If you have made a change to the manuscript, please indicate where in the manuscript the change has been made. (Indicating the line number where the change has been made would be one way, but is not the only way.)”

Address all reviewer comments. Take care in responding to reviewer comments, not just specifically, but the spirit of them, as well. Reviewers are volunteers whose goal is to help you improve your paper. Being anonymous, they receive no credit for their efforts, so their reward is seeing authors benefit from their guidance and input and improve their paper. Addressing specific comments in your responses, but not fixing the underlying issues with the manuscript usually does not engender a good peer-review process. Failing to fix the manuscript to address reviewers’ concerns leaves you open to some other readers in the future raising the same concerns, but not finding a rebuttal within the article. That is why it is useful to make revisions to the manuscript, even if you disagree with the reviewer and have rebutted their concerns. You don’t want future readers raising the same concerns.

Often when reviewers feel that their comments have not been adequately addressed, they will bring that issue up again in the next round of review. Inadequatekly addressed comments further slow down the peer-review process and annoy the reviewer and often the Editor, too. Avoid this by following the four acknowledgements above. If Editors find that authors are not addressing the reviewers’ comments, they can send the manuscript back to the authors for further revision or they can reject the manuscript because the authors are not participating in the peer-review process in the proper spirit. Both will slow down publication of your manuscript.

If you choose to disagree with a reviewer’s comment, provide evidence in support of your point. You can show evidence from your own work or citations from previous literature that show the validity of your statement. Don’t just say that you disagree and not defend your argument.

Finally, remember to thank the reviewers (and the Editor, if they added substantive comments) for their efforts in improving your manuscript in the acknowledgements, if the journal allows it. They are helping you and your manuscript look better.

* Golden, M., and D. M. Schultz, 2012: Quantifying the volunteer effort of scientific peer reviewing. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.,93, 337-345. [AMS]