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Responding to peer reviews

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Once your manuscript makes it through peer review you’ll receive a decision letter from the editor which will include the comments of the reviewers. If the editor thinks that your manuscript could be suitable for their journal, you’ll be asked to make revisions based on the comments of the reviewers and the editors. In these cases, you will also need to write a response to the decision that the previous version of your paper received. These responses can sometimes feel a bit awkward to write, especially if the reviewers have made points that you don’t agree with. Hopefully the advice below makes them easier.

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Reading the reviews and making revisions

Receiving criticism on your work is always difficult, whether it’s from a close friend or an anonymous expert. But it’s important to keep an open mind when reading the comments you receive from reviewers. Remember, the reviewers and the editors are trying to help you improve your manuscript. Try to take the comments – in particular those that initially seem negative or are tough to read – in the constructive manner that they were (or at least should have been) intended.

When it comes to actually making your revisions, the advice will largely depend on what you’ve been asked to change. These tips should be useful for most revisions though:

  • Make minor, easy changes first: Did the reviews highlight some typos, ask you to reword a few sentences, suggest moving a paragraph to a different part of the manuscript? Get those changes out of the way first. It will help to ease you into the process of editing your paper and often gives a nice sense of accomplishment. It also helps to declutter the list of suggested revisions and makes it easier to focus on the more significant edits that you need to work on.
  • Don’t just add to your paper: It can be tempting to just add everything that the reviewers have requested and turn in your revised manuscript. This often isn’t the best option though. In many cases, simply adding to your paper will push you way over the journal’s word count limit. Try to see where you can change things rather than adding and think about what you might be able to remove because of the additions you’ve made. You also need to consider how your manuscript flows and what alterations you may need to make so that the additions requested by the reviewers will make sense to readers.
  • Avoid overcorrecting: If a reviewer notes that something is missing from your paper, your initial reaction might be to add a full section on that topic. That’s not always the best option. Particularly for minor comments from reviewers, it might be more appropriate to add a footnote pointing to other research or just a sentence explaining why that aspect is not covered. Consider the importance of the changes that are being requested as you’re making them.
  • Don’t make changes you disagree with: While you should always stay open to the suggestions of the reviewers, you shouldn’t feel obliged to make every change that is recommended. We’ll discuss this in a bit more detail below. For now though, we’ll just note that, unless the editor has told you that a change would be necessary for your paper to be published in their journal, you can respectfully disagree with a reviewer and simply explain why you haven’t made the change.

Responding to the decision letter

It’s generally best to write your response to the decision letter after making your revisions. That way, you can clearly explain which actions you’ve taken to improve your manuscript. Some authors find it helpful to sketch out a rough response before making the changes as a guide to help them as they go through the editing process. If that’s something that works for you, there’s no need to change your process. Make sure that you go back and check that all of the changes you planned to make have been made (and made in the way that you initially planned) before you resubmit your paper though.

The length and amount of detail in your response letter will entirely depend on the decision your paper received. Still, it’s useful to have a format to fall back on each time and some tactics for the more difficult aspects of the response.

Formatting your response

  • Thanks to editors/reviewers: This is very basic, but it’s a good idea to begin your response by thanking the editors and reviewers for the time and effort that they put into assessing your paper. In the vast majority of cases, all of this work will be voluntary and it’s nice for people to know that their comments have been appreciated. It also gets your response off on the right foot and can help people to be a little more amenable to decisions that you’ve made which go against their recommendations.
  • Responses to major changes: In our guide to peer review, we recommended that you start your review with the most important changes that you feel need to be made. Likewise, we recommend that you start your response by talking about the most significant changes that the reviewers asked you to make. Whether you made these changes or not, you should address them early on in your response to ensure that they aren’t lost amongst confirmations that you’ve corrected small errors.
  • Responses to minor changes: After you’ve addressed the main suggestions that the reviewers made, you can move on to the smaller corrections. In general, these responses don’t need to be anything more than confirmations that you’ve done what was asked for. Feel free to use a bulleted list for this section – it will be quicker for you to write and quicker for the editors and reviewers to check through.
  • Sign-off: Finally, don’t forget to sign off at the end of your response. You can reiterate your thanks to the reviewers and editors if that feels natural to you. If not though, an offer to provide any additional information the editors may need and a quick ‘best wishes’ or ‘kind regards’ is perfectly fine.

Disagreeing with a recommendation

As we mentioned above, it’s likely that in some cases, you will disagree with one or more of the requested changes in the decision letter that you receive. This won’t happen in every paper but, when it does, it’s important to demonstrate that you have considered and engaged with the recommendation and that you’re not dismissing it out of hand. A few ways that you can do that are:

  • Remain polite and professional: Any communication that you have with reviewers and editors should be polite and professional, but it can sometimes be hard to maintain that if you’re responding to a comment that you think is wrong. When explaining your disagreement, keep in mind that the reviewer is an expert in your field who is trying to help you to improve your paper. It can be tough to avoid becoming confrontational with some comments, but keeping the discussion calm and respectful will make it easier to bring everyone over to your side. If you’re worried that your response might be too argumentative, it can be helpful to leave it for a day or two and read it back before sending it off. Asking a colleague, friend or supervisor to proof read the letter can be helpful for this as well.
  • Explain why you have chosen not to make the change: This is the key element of your disagreement. It’s not enough to simply say ‘I don’t agree with you, so I haven’t made that change’. You need to put forward your point of view and explain why the recommendation that the reviewer made isn’t right for your manuscript. Is the suggestion out of scope for the paper? Does it go against the argument you’re trying to make? Do you have a fundamental disagreement with the reviewer’s perspective or philosophy? Did the other review suggest a conflicting change? Whatever the reason, go into detail on why you feel that the suggested change won’t help you to achieve the aims that you have with your article.
  • Reference other work where possible: If you can lean on other published work to help make your point about why a change shouldn’t be made, do so. This could be to strengthen your argument or to show that the point the reviewer is asking you to make has been made in the literature already.
  • Note if you’re making a related change or partial change: In some cases, you may decline to take up a recommendation from a reviewer, but make a related change that partially addresses their concerns. If you’ve done this, make sure you highlight it. This can go a long way to showing how much you have engaged with the review of your paper.

General advice for responses

  • Be polite and professional: Hopefully this goes without saying, but your response should be polite and professional. As noted above, editors and reviewers are experts in your field who have taken time out of their very busy schedules to help you to improve your paper.
  • Be thorough for major comments, brief for minor comments: Giving a brief response to every suggestion can leave editors and reviewers with questions about how or why you’ve made some changes. Going into detail about every response can result in a response letter that’s longer than the revised manuscript. Be strategic with which suggestions you provide in-depth responses to. As noted above, you can simply note that you’ve completed minor changes that were requested.
  • Refer to the decision letter and your article: It’s really helpful for editors and reviewers if you make specific references to which requests you’re responding to and where the changes can be found in your manuscript. For journals that ask you to include line numbers in your submission, refer to specific lines. For those that don’t, you should at least provide the page numbers for each major change.
  • Only use references to other articles where necessary: Unless you’ve chosen not to make a requested change and feel that you need to back up your decision, you shouldn’t need to include references to other articles in your response.

Where to now?

Responding to peer reviews | Edinburgh University Press