Responding to Reviewers

This page shares some generic guidance for responding to feedback on manuscripts while navigating peer review processes. These suggestions are intended to help less-experienced authors navigate the process effectively, supplementing rather than replacing context-specific guidance from supervisors, coauthors, and mentors.

Congratulations on receiving reviews on your work. The peer review process is a vital, albeit imperfect, part of the scientific process. It is helpful to think about the processes as an opportunity to use feedback from Reviewers, Editors and Examiners to enhance the execution and communication of our science.

It is necessary to prepare a ‘Responses to Reviews’ document that addresses each point raised in the feedback that you received. Remember that ALL changes to the Manuscript and Supplementary Information files should normally be tracked, ideally by only the lead author, to make it easy for Editors and Reviewers to assess exactly what has changed from the last version that they assessed. To help avoid confusion in interpreting the Responses to Reviews document, it is helpful to use clear formatting and to be explicit at the beginning that line numbers there refer to the untracked version of the revised manuscript (example template below).

We generally want to aim for constructive appeasement, provided that proposed modifications improve the work. Every suggestion from the reviewers should be carefully considered to determine the best response. It is advisable to take-up as many reviewer suggestions as possible (or that we are comfortable with), as doing so makes it easier to rebut other suggestions that we might disagree with. We authors are most familiar with our work, and it is common to encounter suggestions based on an erroneous or incomplete understanding. In such cases, it can be useful to approach this from the perspective of “how can I improve the communication in my report to avoid my work being misunderstood“. Remember that it is okay to (politely) disagree with suggested changes provided that we can justify this, though in such cases it is useful to be able to respond that “…we have modified our manuscript for clarity…”. Reviewers should not expect all their suggestions to be incorporated but integrating as much of their advice as possible will often help them to be more open to concede some points if they are asked to carry out a second review, and to satisfy editors that we are respecting the opinions of the expert reviews that they solicited. We often encounter suggestions for extended analyses that are far beyond the scope of the viable/supported experimental design, in which cases is it okay to politely rebut such suggestions, sometimes with consideration of integration into the ‘future research/next steps’ section of a discussion.

It is good to aim for the Responses to Reviewers to be comprehensive enough that editors and reviewers could be satisfied based on just that document. One way to help achieve that is using the style of “Thanks for the constructive suggestion, we have refined that part as advised and the revised text now reads “XXXXX YYYYY ZZZZZ” (L12-14).” This both makes it clear that the manuscript been changed with the explicit reference of where the change can be found in the new version, and also includes the revised text, making it easy for editors/reviewers to efficiently evaluate our amendments. It can occasionally be appropriate to appeal to the editor for adjudication, e.g., with responses such as “We do not consider that this suggestion would improve the manuscript but we would be willing to implement X if the editor thinks that this would be beneficial.”

Know that limits on the number of words and display items such as figures and tables are usually slightly relaxed in revision process, permitting the judicious addition of material as suggested by reviewers. It is also okay to make minor additional tracked changes to improve the manuscript even if not explicitly requested. These might include correcting typos, improving phrasing, polishing figures, or integrating relevant recent literature that we have become aware of since the initial submission; if doing this, it is good practice to transparently include a summary of these changes in the top of the Response to Reviewers document.

It is important to give all coauthors an opportunity to review the revised manuscript and responses to reviewers before re-submission. Depending on the scale of changes, this could range from sharing an “Intention to resubmit in e.g. a week and please let me know of any further suggestions”, or if changes are substantial and/or controversial then seeking explicit endorsements for resubmission.

Always repond to journals before the requested deadlines; however, remember that it is always an option to request additional time to complete the revisions to a high standard including to allow for coauthors to carefully review refined work. It is usually preferable to be realistic and err on the side of caution, asking for extra time in the first instance with justification, rather than requesting multiple extensions.

While reviewer feedback can vary greatly in quality and tone, it provides an opportunity to hear from the target audience how they receive your work, what they find exciting about the contribution, and often stimulating suggestions about what you might think about doing differently in your future work. It can be hard but do try to enjoy this aspect of the scientific process! Finally, it is often appropriate to acknowledge the contributions of anonymous/named reviewers in the manuscript’s “Acknowledgments section”.

Example template for a Responses to Reviews document

Reccomended steps if new to responding to reviewer feedback

Step 1: Ensure that you have a new folder ready to prepare a new submission (e.g. “2^nd submission for XXX” where XXX is the journal name), usually in a shared OneDrive. This aids keeping track of sometimes many different versions. Copy the Manuscript and any Supplementary Information files into this folder.

Step 2: Copy all of the feedback from the editor(s) and reviewer(s) into a draft ‘Response to Reviewer’ document, exactly word for word (unless there are extreme circumstances!).

Step 3: Undertake another read through to assess the scale of the requested changes. Some people like to highlight all the feedback at this stage, and then remove the highlighting as things are adequately addressed (e.g., incoproated and/or rebutted). Sometimes using different colours to indicate the magnitude/complexity of the task, and comments to tag where targeted support might be needed from specific coauthors.

Step 4: If you are relatively new to writing Response to Reviewer documents, it is helpful to check out examples that demonstrate the kind of thing that is needed (although don’t feel that they need to be read in full).

Step 5: It is normal to work though changes over several passes. Some people prefer to first implement all the things that are clearly beneficial for improving the report, and leave the most complex/controversial changes until last as you deepen your understanding of any larger changes that might have been requested. Discuss proposed changes with some or all of your coauthors, especially if you have not navigated this process many times before.

Step 6: Ensure that you keep your coauthors informed and give them an opportunity to review and help to refine the propsoed response to reviewers and revised mansucript.

Step 7: Save a clean (i.e., no comments!) version of the responses to reviewers document as a PDF for resubmission to the journal.

Terrestrial Ecosystem Science & Services