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Avoid Hyperbole
I am a firm believer in the idea that the referees and readers should determine whether your work is “interesting”, “surprising”, “paradigm-shifting”, “revolutionary”, “earth-shaking”, “mind-boggling”, etc.
There is also one phrase that drives me nuts when I read it: “It has been shown that…” “It has been shown that the moon is made of green cheese (ref).” can be much more simply stated as “The moon is made of green cheese (ref).”
This has nothing to do with hyperbole; I just had to get it off my chest when I was preparing the slides.Docsity.com
You do not know everything. And you don’t know what you don’t know. What may seem obvious in the draft, to you, may not be clear to other readers. It is very, very, very easy to understand what you meant to say, rather than what you actually said, when you are re-reading a draft for the 10th-12th^ time. Therefore…
Have your penultimate manuscript read by (at least) two colleagues whose judgment and frankness you know and respect. (At least) one colleague should know a great deal about the topic; the second colleague(s) should not be an expert in the area – but should have a good non-expert familiarity with the general topic.
Relax, swallow your pride, and consider carefully the comments they made.
You do not know everything. And you don’t know what you don’t know. What may seem obvious in the draft, to you, may not be clear to other readers. It is very, very, very easy to understand what you meant to say, rather than what you actually said, when you are re-reading a draft for the 10th-12th^ time. Therefore…
The best-of-all-possible-worlds time line:
Finish the penultimate draft. Put in a drawer Reread it a week later, and re-edit it Give it to those colleagues to read; give them a week. Review their comments. Get over your anger, dispair, resignation.
Rewrite, considering what will now appear to be more helpful comments. Submit the manuscript, and breath a sigh of relief.
The role of the corresponding author:
You are responsible for the whole thing.
The “bottom line” rests with you. You see
that the final version of the manuscript is
ready for submission. You correspond with
the journal editor, even if you let/make
your student or post-doc figure out the
crap about how to submit figures. You
make sure are the forms are filled out,
even if you delegate the responsibility.
Errors by others will fall on you, so pay
attention.
The initial letter to the editor
Essentially – in, my opinion, useless –
unless s/he is a personal friend. But –
nevertheless – try to tell the editor what
you did and why it is/will be important to
a relatively wide readership within the
specialty of the journal to which you are
submitting.
Responding to the editor:
This differs from responding to the reviewers.
If you think the reviewer(s) have made a fundamental error in their understanding of the work presented, here is where you should make your case.
You should make your argument as clearly as you can; it is at this point that you might want to ask for the manuscript to be read by another, new referee.
However, bear in mind that most editors will send the prior reviews to a new referee, along with the manuscript and your comments. Editors have a vested interest in siding with referees in close cases.
