Peer reviewing gone wrong

Category: Education

Do you want to know the three moments when your heart will be in mouth during your PhD? First, three seconds before going up on a stage to give a presentation either at a conference or at your thesis defense in front of a hall full of audience just waiting for you. Second, when you see a reply email from the Editor-in-Chief of the journal where you submitted your manuscript. Still don’t feel uneasy? Wait for the third one. Opening the attachment in that reply email of the Editor-in-Chief and glancing through, or more precisely counting the number of suggested major and minor revisions for them to accept your manuscript for publishing. The third one has to be it, partially out of the excitement because your manuscript is more or less publishable only if you obey those suggested revisions, which you would definitely do. You think you would but sometimes it can happen that reviewers might ask for changing the language in your manuscript, re-evaluating most of the data, or a series of new experiments. In addition, most journals give a fixed time period to submit your revised manuscript. What to do now? Go through all remarks and suggested revisions thoroughly. Have a proper discussion with your supervisor and see whether his/her thoughts match with reviewer’s ideas or you both think that one or some of the remarks are just wrong. At this point, discussing with your postdocs in your lab or your collaborator’s lab is also a good choice because these guys also have a fair experience of dealing with reviewer remarks and getting their work published. And the advantage is verifying whether you are thinking straight before objecting reviewer remarks and deciding whether to go ahead with the current journal for publication. Solving conflicts Once you are confident that some of the suggested revisions or remarks are wrong or can be avoided, and you have proper justifications for that, then write down all the details point-by-point and send an email to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. After discussing and resolving the matter properly with the Editor-in-Chief, inform him/her whether you will be going forward with the revision and whether you think that the time given for submitting the revised version is sufficient Remember that the Editor-in-Chief of the journal has the final word whether he/she would like to go ahead with publishing your work. Before, he/she takes that decision you will require to make your clear all conflicts, preferably in a polite manner. Therefore, justifying your objections, what you agree with, and what you disagree with will be the crucial part. Usually, such issues are resolved without much hassle but there are always exceptions. In worst cases, if the doubts and conflicts still remain, you can always opt out to continue with that journal and look for other journals.