Conversations with colleagues suggest there’s no consensus on how to reply to a journal editor’s request to “revise and resubmit”, accompanied by a sheaf of referees’ reports. I offer here some of my own suggestions of how to write a letter to a journal (or perhaps book) editor. Proposed prose is in plain text; its translation is in italics. It’s probably better not to confuse the two if you choose to apply this example.
This is meant to be a suaviter in modo approach. Your personal preferences or substantial convictions may lead you in a different direction. Broadly, I suggest turning these requests around as swiftly as possible, and opting not to address too directly the incompetence or rudeness (if any) of referees; you’ll see the kind of thing I mean below, I hope. In this venue I think it’s better simply to turn the blade than to strike back in kind.
1. Opening paragraph.
Thank you very much for your encouraging letter of two weeks ago
I am prompt, efficient, even eager. [This does of course require that one be prompt, efficient, and even eager.]
and for your and your readers’ thoughtful—and promptly supplied—comments on my manuscript, “xxx.”
Hey, we both know your referees took nine months responding to a 7,000-word typescript. Nevertheless, not so long ago you said you wanted possibly to publish my article, and I’m taking you up, politely, on that possibility.
I am pleased that the essay engaged its readers on a variety of levels, and that they believed it worth serious consideration.
I notice the comments came from all over the map—but this is a positive thing!—and I notice they all went on at some length.
I am especially grateful for their various kind remarks on the essay’s style and importance.
Remember, a lot of them said nice things about the essay.
I was glad, too, to find in your comments and those of the readers opportunities to strengthen the essay,
I am taking the peer-review process seriously
and I have on your advice revised it and am enclosing the new version with the letter.
I’ve done my part, as you suggested.
I summarize below the substantive changes I’ve made.
2. Some mention of specific important revisions then follows.
In response to reader D’s concerns about x, I substantiated statements about the intentions of those policymakers who supported x, including direct quotation on [pages of my manuscript].
Reader D disputed some of my assumptions, which I thought too commonplace to need substantiation. I’ve now put in substantiation to show that I am right and Reader D is wrong.
In keeping with reader A’s concerns about the narrative of Q’s career, I have modified my discussion about the political context of Q’s activities, and added some supporting citations from Q’s biographer and from the historians of the Department of Things Q Worked On.
Reader A said I made factual errors about x’s career. Reader A is wrong, and I have added quotations from knowledgeable authorities to show it.
In response to reader Z’s concerns about the innovations made in [a certain methodology] in the 1930s and after, I have included mention that the narrative here precedes those innovations, and that my interest lies in the political and cultural concerns revealed by the confusion that reigned prior to the application of [those] techniques.
Reader Z wanted me to write about the 1930s. I am interested in the 1910s, which is a different decade. Reader Z also wanted me to write a wholly different kind of essay, an institutional history of technical methods. I am not interested in writing something like that, partly because I am confident your journal would sooner set itself on fire than publish it.
3. Conclusion.
I hope these revisions allow the piece to fulfill the promise that you and the readers have seen in it: that I have clarified the insights you found engaging and preserved the clarity and style on which the readers remarked. Certainly I have tried to make it of interest to the wide audience your journal addresses, and I hope very much you will find that it merits publication there.
Remember, you liked it. And even though you sent it to six referees, all of them found something to like in it. I’ve been cooperative and respectful rather than combative. And I’ve made substantive revisions and documented them in this two-page letter, so I’ve done what a reasonable person could be expected to do; please God decide that it’s enough.
I’m confident y’all will have your own suggestions, disagreements, and so forth.
The Edge of the American West 
35 comments
February 23, 2009 at 10:36 am
Robert
Good post. I’m preparing an article for publication, so this post definitely gives me fair warning about revision process.
February 23, 2009 at 11:29 am
N. Merrill
Oh, hello, Professor Rauchway, Chair of Kiss-Ass Studies. This is all good advice. One thing to keep in mind (useful at least in my experience): the refs are often wrong in a straightforward way because they’re not going to the texts to check. Twice I’ve had R&R’s that said, basically: you criticize X, but X deals with this in his book, and you need to take this into account. It turns out that X’s book doesn’t really deal with the problem at all. This can be really unnerving (in my case, leading to obsessive rereading of X’s book) but in both cases I explained why X is still screwed– patiently but firmly, etc. etc.– and the article was accepted. It just caused me a lot of stress to think, falsely, that the refs must be right.
Also useful to remember: the thing can be changed after the refs accept it. You put in a response to a dumb criticism, you can take it out after the paper is in press.
February 23, 2009 at 11:36 am
John Emerson
My most prestigious publication while I was still trying to become legit was given good reviews by the first three blind readers, with only minor changes suggested. The editor of the journal, the #1 big shot in my field of interest, was someone I had gotten to know ten years earlier, but with whom I had had a not very satisfactory interaction five years or so after that.
As soon as the editor had the first three, favorable reviews in his hand, he sent my paper out to a non-standard fourth reader, who also liked it. Thus, he had little choice but to publish it.
In the letter accompanying the original submission I had added a little personal note, and in the letter gratefully acknowledging the acceptance I put in another little personal note, but neither was answered. I concluded that the interaction had been even more unfavorable than I had thought.
I guess I’m too fragile, because not too long afterward I decided that the becoming-legit biz was not for me. And that’s how I became an internet troll.
February 23, 2009 at 11:46 am
John Emerson
By “non-standard” I meant “supernumerary”.
February 23, 2009 at 11:55 am
eric
Oh, hello, Professor Rauchway, Chair of Kiss-Ass Studies.
Yeah, well. My thinking is, these aren’t the circumstances in which you want to get into a fight. It’s better if everyone has had to do some preparation (as you say, referees sometimes don’t) and if you have an audience larger than the single editor.
February 23, 2009 at 11:58 am
Bitchphd
Cite the people the reviewers mention, even if the citation merely points out that their work isn’t really applicable.
And the turn it around fast advice, I wish I’d had that on my first R&R piece; as an anxious little grad student, I took it as rejection. Stupid.
February 23, 2009 at 12:28 pm
ben
you put in a response to a dumb criticism, you can take it out after the paper is in press.
!
February 23, 2009 at 12:50 pm
kathy a.
this is the primary explanation for footnotes that really don’t seem necessary or enlightening, isn’t it?
February 23, 2009 at 1:02 pm
kathy a.
which reminds me of a story. my friend’s father was a brilliant professor, and he wrote The Textbook in his field, widely accepted as definitive, with regular updated editions. since his field was something big and legal, and friend’s dad was the most dedicated of scholars, there were a great many footnotes.
after finals every year, and after restorative nights out with their friends, students would call the house and speak with the great professor. “the footnotes! why oh why are there so many footnotes?!” or something along those lines.
i understand that the professor was always kind with his students during these calls. he was probably equally pleasant with his editors, while grinding them swiftly to dust with extreme documentation.
February 23, 2009 at 1:29 pm
kid bitzer
as a frequent referee and former editorial board member, i think this advice is extremely good.
i hope, in addition, that readers will not find it entirely discordant with how you would carry on any other professional correspondence or exchange in your discipline.
(i.e., this seems like a really good distillation of really good common sense; what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed.)
February 23, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Neil the Ethical Werewolf
Yeah, that’s basically the approach I took in my one R&R to date (it worked! woo!). The reviewer actually did a good job and had useful suggestions, though, so it came naturally.
The one big departure I made from your procedure was to send the paper back several months after getting the R&R. People told me that the journal would like the idea that I took the reviewer’s suggestions seriously and spent lots of time on them, so I didn’t feel any need to hurry.
February 23, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Vance
Hmm, seems like both promptitude and delay could be interpreted as an expression of either diligence or indifference. Kremlinology is tricky.
February 23, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Colin
A great post. I try to remember, when I write these things, that (a) the editor is my friend and wants the process to succeed and (b) mine is not the only article this editor has to deal with. So the job of my reply is to offer solutions, not problems.
Bitch’s advice is great as always — if in doubt, show what you get back from a journal to more experienced folks and ask them how to read it. One process I had left for dead fairly recently turned out to be easily revived.
February 23, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Michael Elliott
Great post. The Kiss-Ass Tone is definitely the way to go with this genre, as well as specific details showing how very, very, very seriously you’ve taken the reports and solved the problems (Colin’s comment is spot-on about solving problems). I’ve also occasionally just ignored some minor things if they were outrageous.
The really tricky thing is if the reports contradict each other on the kind of revision the article is. If that happens, my formula is something like this: 1) note the contradiction, in a calm, methodical way, spelling it out without saying “gotcha”; 2) claim that you find this contradiction helpful because it has helped you to identify some really significant shortcoming in the article; 3) then say how you have revised the article to address that shortcoming; 4) if you have chosen one path revision over the other, explain why, but do so in a way that praises the other path.
If any graduate students are reading this (and don’t all graduate students read Edge? Not in English. Sigh.) , I will point out a piece of advice that I give to graduate students related to what Bitch and Colin say. The first time you go through this process, NEVER try to understand readers reports alone. Show them to a professor you trust, and have her or him help you decode them. Readers reports are a strange and often brutally nasty genre. I think one natural reaction on getting a set of negative reports is shame and an instinct to hide them. Don’t. Your adviser can help you figure out if they are useful — and how to respond to them — or if they are simply birdcage liner. If your advisor can’t or won’t do that, then revise and resubmit your committee.
February 23, 2009 at 4:17 pm
ari
revise and resubmit your committee
I think it’s probably too late for me to do this. If only we’d met sooner, Michael, my career might have turned out differently.
February 23, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Michael Elliott
It’s too bad, Ari, because obviously your career in shambles.
February 23, 2009 at 4:30 pm
ari
But it could have been different.
February 23, 2009 at 4:30 pm
ari
A different kind of shambles, I mean.
February 23, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Michael Elliott
The shambles are always greener on the other side of the fence.
Or something like that.
February 23, 2009 at 4:47 pm
PorJ
What about those bizarre cases where the reviewers disagree completely with each other? I had an article with 3 reviews: 1. Accept as is, 2. Author needs to carefully focus on minor technical development within larger argument, because it is what is “new”, 3. Author spends too much time on minor technical detail; what matters is the wider implications and inferences that can be drawn.
This seemed so strange to me I dropped an e-mail to the editor. The response was: try to do both. To some extent, I was able to – by cutting much interesting stuff to add a couple of relatively useless and redundant paragraphs I wasn’t as happy with the revision as with the original piece. Then the piece went back out. Reviewer 2 wasn’t happy I didn’t focus all the way on the little picture, but reviewer 3 accepted the change.
What does it say about peer review that you can get 3 such different readings? Also, in terms of writing style alone – can anybody here say their piece was improved in peer review? I’m not talking about organization or clarity. Just style. I think a lot of academic writing is needlessly deadened by the process.
February 23, 2009 at 5:19 pm
kid bitzer
completely agree. this is why i refuse to comment on peer-reviewed blogs.
February 23, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Michael Elliott
in terms of writing style alone – can anybody here say their piece was improved in peer review? I’m not talking about organization or clarity. Just style. I think a lot of academic writing is needlessly deadened by the process.
I did a lot of reviewing for a journal when I was on it’s editorial board, and so read a lot of first submissions and then later the revise-and-resubmit. (OK, I admit it, it was me asking for that focus on minor technical detail. I love minor technicalities!) I never saw the style change, unless it was in a specific sentence singled out by the review. I think academic prose gets deadened by a lot of other things, but not, at least in my field, peer review.
I will say, though, that I’ve had some really good experiences with peer review (both articles and books) that have helped my writing in terms of both organization and argument. And some not-so-good experiences as well. Luckily, one of my first peer review experiences was with an editor who very carefully read the reports and told me in a cover letter what she did and did not think was important in them. I’ve never had a journal editor do that so carefully since. Of course, my entirely scholarly output these days is limited to blog comments.
February 23, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Colin
Your three reviewers sound admirably well-behaved, PorJ!
My feeling is you have to respond to comments that go after the heart of your argument. But when a reviewer asks you to do something extraneous, you say something like “I welcome Reviewer 3’s invitation to extend the article to cover X, but given the material that I have added to address the concerns raised by Reviewers 1 and 2, considerations of space suggest that this be left for another paper.” This should fly, because you and the editor are united in the desire that your paper be short and punchy and done.
In my experience, the papers that got really incompatible comments were those that had too little focus, in which case reviewers tried to help me out by suggesting ways to recast, and of course their recastings diverged.
On your last question, at least in my own case, aside from a few clenched footnotes, the impact of reviews on my writing has been salutary. I’ve lost a lot of needless obiter dicta, flourishes, and extraneous nonsense, and been forced to say what I mean.
February 23, 2009 at 6:24 pm
andrew
this is why i refuse to comment on peer-reviewed blogs.
But blogs are constantly currently being peer-reviewed! They’re self-correcting! Can formal peer review do that?
February 23, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Sandwichman
I once had a revised, resubmitted article returned to me for “further revision” with, ostensibly, a second set of comments from one of the reviewers. But as I read through those comments, I realized that I had already addressed the issues, exhaustively, in my revision and had cataloged them in my covering letter. I dug out the first set of comments from that reviewer and, sure enough, the second set was simply a duplicate. I wrote back explaining to the editor that there must have been some mistake in transmission. The editor informed me that, no, the reviewer insisted that his comment did indeed refer to my revised paper.
I felt duly released from any obligation or motivation to sugar-coat my letter withdrawing the paper from consideration.
February 23, 2009 at 9:57 pm
teofilo
But blogs are constantly currently being peer-reviewed!
But are they always already so?
February 23, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Michael Turner
The shambles are always greener on the other side of the fence.
From my understanding of the original meaning of shambles, I think you might have meant “less blood-red”. I might be wrong, however. If I am wrong (I’m too lazy to look it up myself), well, when you resubmit your blog comment, feel free to point out how my attempt at a correction made you at the problem in a whole new way, at least.
As for my pointing out that “shambles” might be more singular than plural, and that the singular is probably preferred in this case (not least because it’s more parallel with the “grass is greener” of the original), remember to italicize “really” when you reply that this was a really good point. Your breathless faux-enthusiasm will give me something else to pick on, when I submit my second batch of obstructive comments.
February 24, 2009 at 9:47 am
Robert Justin Goldstein
Any suggestions for unreasonably delayed reviews? In one recent case, a journal took over a year (and then turned down an article that was later quickly accepted by a more prestigious journal). In another case, I withdrew an article when, after four months without getting any feedback, after I wrote and inquired if I could anticipate a decision within a finite period that I specified (perhaps two more months) the editors essentially responded that they could not promise a definite decision ever!
Bob G.
February 24, 2009 at 11:10 am
PorJ
Any suggestions for unreasonably delayed reviews?
This is a huge pet-peeve of mine. In my experience initial reviews have taken everywhere from 3 months to 11 months – regardless of prestige of the journal. What about this corollary: If you don’t review my manuscript in six months or less I will feel free to submit it to another journal ?
Another pet peeve: what’s the deal with cues that last more than 2 years? If the journal is accepting work now that it wont publish until 2011, shouldn’t you be allowed to shop it elsewhere?
Anybody know what the cue is at places like the AHR and JAH?
February 24, 2009 at 11:28 am
Robert Justin Goldstein
PorJ, you can certainly withdraw an article at any time, but, of course, then you start all over with the new journal. These issues–delayed reviews and lengthy print queues are not so critical to tenured or retired faculty like myself, but they can cost non-tenured faculty their jobs and their careers. I think what is needed are discipline (i.e. history)-wide norms–three months from submission to decision sounds more than reasonable to me, regular publication of information on this subject (the details obviously would be tricky but the idea is to embarrass non-conforming journals) and a commit that the editors will read and decide when the reviewers fall down. The excuse I keep getting is that the journals are calling on the same reviewers over and over and the reviewers are overcommitted, blah, blah. Such reviewers should be ousted and those who review should commit themselves to timely reviews.
February 24, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Bitchphd
Hey Eric, now that publshers address correspondence to you c/o the blog, what’s the advice about publishing your kiss ass letter interspersed with more honest commentary on said blog?
February 24, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Colin
All I can say, PorJ and Robert, is that the stuff you’re complaining about is pretty standard. Journals are journals and they run on voluntary labor. Some manage faster turnaround; if that’s what you insist on do your homework and only submit to those journals. And when you’re called upon to review something yourself, accept when plausible and try to get it done promptly.
February 24, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Robert Justin Goldstein
sorry, colin, journals don’t tell u in advance how fast they turn around and they never will promise anything anyway so it wouldn’t matter if they could.
bob g.
February 25, 2009 at 12:01 am
Colin
I have in mind one I’ve published with twice that has a commitment to quick turnaround, and delivers on it.
March 19, 2009 at 8:58 am
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