How to Read Referee Comments

Sometimes, referee comments can be a wonderful ego boost. More often than not, however, receiving them can be a frustrating and disappointing experience.

Referees tend to focus far more time on negative aspects of papers than positive ones – not because they mean to be overly critical, but because they want to help you, as an author, to improve your work. Telling you how great you are for page after page might flatter your ego, but won’t necessarily help your career!

However, when you read pages of criticism, it can be easy to feel despairing about the response. Some senior academics know to expect this, read through the critical comments, and wait a few days before even thinking about which to reply to and which to put aside. Because editors are human, revising calls for a good faith effort to respond to useful criticisms and suggestions, not for complete obedience. Reviewers’ suggestions are just that, not demands.

Here are some common reactions to reviewer criticism, and some encouragement to help you through the process:

‘I got revise & resubmit/major revisions! This is a disaster!’

No, it’s not a disaster! These two options are the most common outcomes of the refereeing process, so please don’t be discouraged if you receive this response. Even papers by famous figures in the world of planning receive forthright feedback requesting major corrections. Remember, being asked to submit a revision is actually a positive sign that someone values your work and thinks it’s publishable.

‘The referees hated it! Perhaps I should give up!’

Please remember that the editors and referees have recommended that you should resubmit! This means that they see merit in your paper, and think that your ideas are important. Clearly, something about your research grabbed their attention.

It sometimes helps to read the comments, and then put them aside for a week before assessing which comments are easy to respond to, which comments will take fresh work, and which comments seem more appropriate to another or next paper, not this one. When you come back to them, chances are the assessment of the referees will seem far less negative, and you will be more able to tell what is fair and necessary in the assessments.

‘They really didn’t understand my point!’

It is common to feel this. And sometimes it is true! Referees are ordinary people, not gods. They get things wrong sometimes. If you need any evidence of that, check out the numerous articles on Nobel prize winning papers that were originally rejected by journals.

You don’t have to agree with absolutely everything that the referees have to say about your paper. When you are asked to respond to comments, you get the opportunity to send the senior editors a letter, explaining in detail, point by point, what changes you’ve made. Here you can also defend a piece of your argument that you feel has been unfairly attacked by a referee. That said, we strongly advise that you pay close attention to the editorial letter!

However, if you think that someone doesn’t ‘get’ your point, it is important to consider whether this might be because you haven’t expressed it as clearly as you might. Perhaps you could rework the structure of your paper to make the structure of your thoughts clearer for the reader? Sometimes the comments that seem to miss the point can be helpful to you in identifying areas of your argument that need to be clarified.

‘They’ve asked for major revisions, but I don’t have time! Perhaps I’ll make a few small changes and resubmit’

Unfortunately, sometimes authors do resubmit their papers having made only minor corrections that fail to deal with the substance of the editorial letter or the referee comments. In these cases, the editors simply send the paper back, asking for more major work to be done. However, the speculative submission wastes your time, and delays publication of your article. It’s far more time-efficient to set aside those extra two days and to do the work in one go!