Top 10 Tips for Responding to Reviewer and Editor Comments

Like it or not, many aspects of our lives involve a review process. In college, your professors were reviewers who evaluated and graded your work. When you apply for a loan, the bank uses appraisers and accountants to review your application. When a US senator writes a new piece of legislation, there are many other reviewers who will want to change the document. When a company wants to apply for a patent, an army of attorneys reviews the application to find any reason to decline the request.So it should be no surprise to anyone who submits a scientific paper for publication that the editor and several reviewers will nearly always find problems or want to see changes in the paper. It is a normal part of the path to publication. You cannot control what the reviewers say. But you can control how you respond to their comments. So here are my Top 10 Tips to help you navigate through the response process.The rare scientific paper is the one accepted without any need for revision. So, as an author you should expect that your submitted papers, if they make it past the first peer review cycle, will require some sort of modification to satisfy the critiques of the reviewers. It is both the editor's and the peer reviewer's job to make sure, on behalf of the journal, that your paper is scientifically sound, factual, clear, complete, and original. To do so, these individuals must often point out what is wrong with your paper. And for you as the author, that hurts.When you see the criticisms that the reviewers have about your paper, go ahead and get mad. Go ahead and vent your frustration to a colleague. Then get over it before you take any future action to revise …