Guest Blog: What Authors and Reviewers Want From Journal Editors

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

by David Morgan

I responded to one of Mitch Allen’s previous blog posts by expressing my frustration with editors who deal with Revise and Resubmit evaluations by telling authors nothing more than “read the reviewers’ comments and respond to them.” Mitch, being Mitch, asked me to expand on those comments, and I am more than happy to do so.

            Besides an extensive history of publishing in peer-reviewed journals, I’ve also been a reviewer for nearly 50 different journals (and an editorial board member for eight of them), so I have a lot of experience in both the author and reviewer roles. Based on that experience, here are my thoughts about what I don’t hesitate to call inadequate editorial advice on Revise and Resubmit reviews.

            From an author’s point view, I need to know what you want so I can revise effectively. Of course, the word “need” is a signal that authors can be needy, and I suspect this is why so many editors have a policy of giving mere “read and respond” instructions. The fear is that authors will always want more guidance, up to the point where you might as well do the revision for them! There is definitely a point to avoiding that hassle, but it ignores the other costs that go with it. The first and most obvious of these costs is poor quality revisions, which may even lead to unnecessary further rounds of reviews.

            A second and potentially more troubling cost comes in the form of emails and phone calls in which authors desperately seek the advice you failed to give them. This can be especially problematic when the authors can rely on a personal connection with the editor, which raises the ethical dilemma of giving some people more assistance than others. Of course, you can keep refusing any assistance to one and all, but that just kicks the can down the road.

            Both of these costs raise the same basic question: By not doing the work of giving authors adequate direction, you are just creating more work. How often do you have to go to a third round of reviews? How annoying are those beseeching emails? Wouldn’t an ounce of prevention be better than a pound of cure?

            Next, there is the reviewers’ point of view. In this case, the obvious problem is dealing with a resubmission when the authors have made inadequate revisions. This is especially annoying when the problem seems to be due as much to a weak editorial policy as to the authors’ inability to decipher the original reviews. Since the reviewers have (hopefully) read the original reviews, they may well sympathize with authors who had to plow through several lengthy and potentially contradictory evaluations. Indeed, reviewers almost always start as authors, which can make us more likely to identify with a beleaguered author than with a lazy editor (even if that laziness reflects poor journal policy, rather than personal sloth).

            But there is also a more hidden source of frustration for reviewers: Without editorial feedback, I have no way to learn how useful my review was. As a reviewer, I have to write for both the author and the editor as a dual audience. So, when an editor does provide a comprehensive summary of the reviews, I greedily search for recognition of my own remarks. And when I don’t find that, I go through the other reviewers’ remarks to find out what made them more useful. In other words, I want to be a valuable reviewer, and the main way that I can do that is through the feedback that I get from editors.

            Finally, what does providing meaningful feedback on Revise and Resubmit decisions mean for the journal overall? First, authors won’t waste time your time by resubmitting articles where the hidden demands were more than they can handle. Second, articles that do come back will be much closer to the mark. And third, reviewers will be more satisfied in their experience in working for the journal. Altogether, a rare case of a win-win-win situation for authors, and reviewers, and editors alike.

David Morgan is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Portland State University, well know for his research on aging and on focus group methods. 

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