Tag: Reviewer comments

I once made the mistake of allowing my mother to read the revise and resubmit (RnR) for a journal article. Reading the reviewers’ judgements on my work left her furious. She wanted to write to them outlining why their critiques of my work were egregiously wrong. To be clear, my mum is not an academic, but just a ferociously protective mother.

Getting feedback from reviewers can trigger many emotions. The stakes can feel high, especially earlier in your career, when publications are so important for securing fellowships and jobs. As a dyslexic academic those emotions can often take me back to school when I frequently felt inadequate and frustrated when submitting work. Making time to respond to reviewers’ comments and reworking drafts can be daunting, especially if it has taken months and sometimes years to craft the first submission. Praise in academia is rare and enduring what can feel like constant negativity is challenging.

Here are some strategies I think are useful when managing emotional responses to reviewers’ comments:

• If you have a negative reaction to an RnR, put it aside for 48 hours. During that time, resist the urge to look, but allow yourself to feel all your emotions. It is okay to take a moment to feel upset and disappointed, you have poured precious time and energy into crafting the draft.
  
• Once you return to them, hopefully feeling calmer, try not to catastrophise and allow your inner critic to paralyse you. It is excellent news that you have received your comments. The journal editor has deemed it strong enough to be sent out for peer review and has secured reviewers who were willing to engage in your work, which is a great achievement; try to frame it positively in your mind.
  
• Remember that acting as a reviewer is frequently unacknowledged labour and since the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer academics are making time to review. Another academic agreed to make time to engage with your work. At its best, the peer review process can strengthen your paper by helping you clarify your argument and the contribution your work is making; in the worst case scenario, at least someone has read your work!
  
• Try to separate yourself from your work. As academics, our sense of self can be mistakenly caught up in our identity and sense of self. Try to remind yourself that the reviewer is not evaluating you as a person, just the words they see on the page.
  
• Unfortunately, peer reviews are far from perfect, and reviewers can cross ethical lines and get things wrong. If you are concerned about a point, a reviewer has made you write privately to the editor handling the submission for clarification. I would not rush to do this, but instead, rebut it with evidence of why you feel the response has been misinterpreted. Be specific when making this case and clear in your reasoning, but try not to overwrite it. It is always a tricky balance between too much and too little detail but try to stick to the facts and move on.
  
• When constructing the response letter, I always maintain politeness. I thank the reviewers at the start and try to maintain a positive tone, even in the face of the harshest comments. There is nothing to be gained by writing in an aggressive or passive-aggressive manner, it won’t help you reach the end of the process more quickly.

The reviewers’ comments that enraged my mother helped me substantially strengthen my paper’s argument, and it continues to be one of the papers I am most proud to have written. I will always be grateful to the reviewers for reading and engaging with my paper, despite the many hours it took me to respond.