Clarity of decision vol. II: how best to help authors revise their papers

Sharing advice and best practices so your authors can revise with success

When authors receive a decision letter from a scholarly journal, provided the decision is not a rejection they might already consider it a win. But wait: how are they supposed to revise their paper so that it eventually gets accepted, preferably without going through many more revision rounds?

This is where your skill in writing those “revise” decision letters comes into play. You need to synthesize all feedback (as well as your own appraisal of the paper) and incorporate it into the decision letter in such a fashion that it can be interpretable and actionable for the author.

Why is this so important? Well, look at what happens if an editor just forwards reviewer reports without any “interpretation” ... Reviewer #1 says this additional experiment is “crucial!” whereas Reviewer #3 disagrees: “this additional experiment would be useless!” If the requests (and significance thereof) from the reviewer and the journal are unclear, the number of revision rounds can substantially increase, and the author is left wondering exactly what they should be doing.

Good editorial advice as to how to revise a paper makes it easier for the author to create a revision plan, removing much of the guesswork. Revisions have a cost: both in terms of time as well as money (e.g., for new experiments). So how do you go about writing a good revision decision letter?

For starters, collect your ideas… What is the main point of the paper? The most substantial changes should ensure its central point is better presented and better supported by evidence. Were there any issues you noticed (beyond the referees’ advice), which should be addressed?

Then, go through the referee reports. Were there any differences in opinion? Were there points which seemed unclear? It may happen that the reviewers are not fluent in English, of course. In rare cases, you might need to ask the reviewers to clarify their point(s), but in most cases it is sufficient that you reshape their sentences. In general, resolving obscure or conflicting advice goes a long way towards improving an author’s chances of getting their paper in better shape. In particular, you should highlight what is mandatory versus change requests which might be optional.

Then there are aspects of a paper which reviewers seldom investigate. An example would be ethics statements. It is ultimately the editor’s role to make sure the authors have included all required items in their paper. These can range from consent statements, details of ethics committee approval, confirmation of adherence to ethical standards, warranty that experiments have complied with relevant guidelines… Flagging such items to authors at revision will prevent unnecessary back-and-forth prior to acceptance of the manuscript.

Finally, it would be a good idea to have another look at the title and abstract. More often than not, titles need to be rewritten to make them crisper and more attractive. The title needs to convey the whole message of the article in a sentence; word selection is essential to that effect. Likewise, the first sentence of the abstract, which is frequently the only one readers actually read, often needs reshaping.

To finish off, add the specific advice you have constructed through the process described above to the generic template letter present in the manuscript handling system. Clarity is of the essence, as the decision letter is all the advice the author is ever going to get about the paper. Incidentally, adopting a friendly tone and ditching the often-ubiquitous formality seen in such communications may also help…

It can be time-consuming to carefully assess referee reports (and define your own thoughts about the paper), weigh the various issues and decide what level of importance to assign to each. The reward, however, is massive. Authors will be much more likely to get it right with their first revision, avoiding a lengthy back-and-forth. In addition, they really appreciate clear editorial advice. A happy author, after all, is one who is more likely to return!