Responding to reviewers’ comments
I have just finalised (I hope) the last version of a short paper I have written for the ReSIG newsletter. I was supposed to write it last year, but never quite managed to get a first attempt together. This year I went back to my drafts and had another go. I think it is the first time that I have had my writing scrutinised quite so carefully, with comments from two different people dotted down the margins. I have found the whole process both interesting and developmental.
There are several things that strike me about the process. Firstly, what seems crystal clear to me, does not always seem so clear to others. You really do need to clarify your use of words and ideas. I am learning that this is particularly important when it comes to the central conceptual idea with which you are working. I constantly need to put myself in the shoes of someone who might not have heard of it before. I think familiarity with an idea can make us lazy and less concise than perhaps we need to be when explaining it.
I began with about 3,500 words, and the suggested word count was around 2,000, so there was a lot of editing to do. I always find this quite hard – I seem to lose the flow of what I am trying to say. However, the pruning process was a useful exercise in summarising what I thought were the main points and so had to be left in. Taking out quotes from data that were perhaps repetitive and didn’t really add anything new felt wrong at the time, but made the whole thing read better when I returned to it the next day. I have a feeling I might well need to remind myself of this when it comes to the actual thesis.
Another helpful thing was having people suggest different words or phrases, or asking me to rephrase something or find a different word. Again, it is about the succinctness and clarity of the writing and I often find myself using a lot more words than I really need to say something. I also began alluding to things that were not central to the aims of the article. Here I thought the reviewers were particularly helpful: take it out completely or make it a stated aim and add a few more comments throughout. I went with the latter, but it was again a reminder to have a very clear purpose and make sure you stick to it. Don’t get sidetracked.
So all in all a positive experience with some useful reminders of what is important in the writing process.
90% of the time, maybe more, I think we can learn a lot from reviewers’ feedback comments, about our style, our ideas, our logic, our assumptions, our implicit concerns, etc, and I find that the text which comes out of the revision process is usually sharper and more reader-oriented than the original. Occasionally, a reviewer uses your work as an excuse to get on an old hobby horse of theirs, and sometimes they miss things somewhere along the way so their comments may be less useful, but overall, this review process is a strength of our academic process, and, once our initial reactions to the feedback has passed, we can very often benefit from a feedback-informed rework.
I am saying all this now very mindful of feedback I am working with these days on a chapter and, to be honest, almost all of the feedback identifies issues that do need to be addressed. 🙂
I am saying it also as a reminder to myself of the responsibility attached to being a reviewer (and examiner) …. when we have the privilege of engaging with someone else’s work in development (as a draft, as a submission), we have a duty to beware of our own hobby horses, our own stylistic preferences, our own ideas and connecting logic, our own assumptions and implicit concerns, etc.
Mindful of all of this, I believe we should proceed in a spirit of optimism, recognising the work that has gone into the draft, and recognising, too, that our task is to help iron out any glitches in making it fully reader-ly, making it not only about what the writer has to say, but also what the reader needs to hear/read in order to appreciate that writer-ly message, and recognising that we have an opportunity to help shape the reader-ly articulation of ideas coming out of writer-ly graft and inspiration.
These days, I try to avoid giving feedback when I am tired, grumpy, stressed out, etc – not easy given the working lives we all have and the need to fit things (eg review tasks, examining work) whenever we can – because I realise, belatedly, that I read the same piece of work very differently depending where I am at the time of review.