Especially if you follow some basic principles and procedures, and put some time into it. Manuscript revision is an essential part of the research process, of making our ideas and our papers better. If the response was not an outright reject, probably the reviewers saw value in the proposal. This post is just a way of saying “it’s OK to feel like that – everybody does”… but also that “this too shall pass”, and that publication is actually closer than it was when you had just submitted (even if it does not feel so now).
Lately, I have been seeing most of the PhD students around me going through this experience for the first time, and how hard it is psychologically. I have experienced this myself many, many times 1. You question the whole idea of ever finishing this PhD.
That big task you had so confidently checked (rather, that host of smaller tasks or milestones you had already passed), suddenly un-checks itself and bites back. Then, you just got on with your life: doing the next study, analyzing the next batch of data, reading and understanding a new corpus of literature that seems relevant… Several months later, when you had already forgotten about the paper, an email arrives: major revision. If you’ve been for some time into your PhD, probably you know the feeling: after what seemed like an eternity of writing, rewriting, getting feedback from your co-authors, rewriting again, dealing with the unexpectedly complicated formatting issues and a surprisingly medieval submission system, you finally submitted your paper to a good journal. In this post, I go over the concrete (and, sometimes, counter-intuitive) steps I follow to revise my journal papers upon receiving peer-review critiques, as well as some basic principles to increase your chances of success and avoid unnecessary suffering.
This complex act of scientific communication involves balancing diplomacy with integrity, creativity and systematicity. Some journals require authors to highlight the changes in their revised manuscript, which simplifies this.Along with writing your first journal paper, doing a substantial revision to your manuscript upon receiving the reviewers’ comments is one often-cited painful moment of any doctoral process. You should focus on how the author has changed the paper in light of their own response comments. This will allow you to see what changes were requested – including any by the other reviewer – and how the author has responded to those changes. Usually the editor will provide both the original decision letter and the author’s response to it. Nevertheless, the aim of the review remains the same: to ensure the paper is of a publishable standard. Thus your review of a revised manuscript should be relatively quick and may only involve checking that certain requested actions have been done. Ideally, any significant changes should already have been requested in the original review – this subsequent review should be to ensure that the changes have been made, rather than for raising additional issues. It is important new reviewers respect previous review comments and the efforts the author has made to revise the paper
Minor changes will usually be assessed directly by the editor.It is uncommon for a paper to be accepted for publication without changes – most papers are revised at least once in light of comments from reviewers and editors.
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