{"id":10109,"date":"2017-04-25T20:53:01","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T20:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/?p=10109"},"modified":"2017-04-25T20:53:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T20:53:01","slug":"the-value-of-painful-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/?p=10109","title":{"rendered":"The value of painful review"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h1 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/adrianholliday.com\/the-value-of-painful-review\/\">The value of painful review<\/a><\/h1>\n<aside class=\"entry-meta\">April 24, 2017 | Filed under: <a href=\"http:\/\/adrianholliday.com\/category\/how-is-it-possible-to-write\/\" rel=\"category tag\">How is it possible to write?<\/a><\/aside>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Following the theme that something can be made of everything. My co-author and I have just finished revising another article. As is often the case when trying to break new ground, one of the reviews is negative. \u201cWhat is the point of this paper? It doesn\u2019t seem to make any worthwhile contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, once we have got over the initial anger, good things can come out of it. I hope that this can also apply to difficult vivas and research review meetings.<\/p>\n<p>The important question to ask is: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t this particular audience understand what we were trying to say?\u201d It is then that the interesting stuff can begin. When we look in detail through the text that we submitted, we discover a number of things we didn\u2019t see before. We are looking with new eyes now \u2013 the imagined eyes of that audience that didn\u2019t understand us. It is indeed true that we didn\u2019t actually explicitly make the points that we thought that we had. Sometimes the points aren\u2019t there at all. Sometimes they\u2019re in places where they don\u2019t make sense, or not in the places were they <i>would<\/i> make sense.<\/p>\n<p>Then, when we put in the points that we had forgotten to make, other things begin to emerge \u2013 new relationships and connections that had not been clear before. Moving things around, thinking laterally about the text, brings new thinking and takes us forward to new places. We end up with a new title and a new core idea. It\u2019s not easy. It might not come right until the fourth, fifth or sixth edit. But immensely worth all the work.<\/p>\n<p>So thank you to that negative reviewer. Without you we wouldn\u2019t have a better article with improved and even new ideas!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The value of painful review April 24, 2017 | Filed under: How is it possible to write? Following the theme that something can be made of everything. My co-author and I have just finished revising another article. As is often the case when trying to break new ground, one of the reviews is negative. \u201cWhat is the point of this [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[507],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p865eh-2D3","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10110,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10109\/revisions\/10110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}