Sometimes all a manuscript needs to be ready for publication is a little R&R. No, we’re not referring to rest and relaxation (though many researchers could use it!). We’re talking about a “Revise and Resubmit” request.
Cue the sighs of despair…
For authors, referees, and editors, R&Rs can feel like an unwelcome hurdle to overcome just as they think they’re approaching the end of peer review, requiring another round of review that may lead to new contradictions among stakeholders about how a manuscript should be shaped. When handled well, however, R&Rs don’t have to be a source of significant stress or cause lengthy holdups in your publishing process.
In this blog post, we’re rounding up tips to improve the R&R experience for everyone involved and help you cross the finish line to make those long-anticipated decisions sooner.
Only issue R&Rs for manuscripts with a high chance of acceptance
First, let’s talk about when R&Rs aren’t a good option.
To state the obvious — but not always so obvious — take care to issue R&R decisions only when you are confident a manuscript has a reasonably high likelihood of publication with revisions.
When making the call on whether to issue an R&R, editors are not just deciding if a paper has the potential to be improved (that’s true for almost every piece) but whether it will have a fighting chance at acceptance. Ill-advised R&Rs can create false expectations for authors and lead them to invest substantial time and effort into revisions that were never likely to go anywhere in the first place. If it seems like a long shot for the authors to adequately address reviewers’ feedback within your journal’s revision timeline, it is often more respectful of the authors’ time and the reviewers who evaluated their paper to issue a rejection instead.
As Angela Cochran, vice president of publishing at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), explained in a past Scholarly Kitchen article, issuing R&R decisions for on-the-fence papers can also have the unintended consequence of leading journals to let subpar articles make it to publication. “When editors, reviewers, and authors have put time into critiquing and improving a paper, it just seems downright unfair to reject the paper,” she said. “But, there can be a resignation to accept an okay paper at this point, too.”
Cochran noted that “Decline with encouragement to resubmit may be appropriate for papers where the topic is interesting, but there is too much work required to keep the paper in the review loop.”
Quick tip: Admins of journals using Scholastica’s Peer Review System can set up custom decision types, such as “Decline with encouragement,” by following the steps in this help document.
Consider cascading submissions if another journal may be a better fit
What if you get a submission with apparent publication potential that just isn’t quite right for your journal?
If your journal is a lone wolf, so to speak, that will be the end of the line for that submission (per the previous section). However, if it’s part of a portfolio of titles, there may be an opportunity there. You might consider cascading the submission to another related journal as appropriate. In that case, your editors would reject the submission and offer to transfer it to the other journal along with its review reports (with the reviewers’ permission, of course).
There are many benefits to manuscript transfers, including sending quality papers to sister titles that may need submissions, letting the authors of rejected papers down more gently by giving them another chance at acceptance, and reducing redundant peer-review work.
To make manuscript transfers easier for everyone involved, journals can use editorial management software that supports automated submission cascading. For example, publishers that use Scholastica’s Peer Review System for two or more journals can easily set up manuscript transfer workflows for those titles by following the steps in this help document.
Now that we’ve covered when not to issue R&Rs and what to do instead, let’s move on to tips for improving R&R processes for submissions that have the potential to be published by your journal.
Address contradictory feedback and offer authors guidance in R&R decisions
As an editor, you know that peer review comments come in many shapes and forms. Sometimes, reviewers submit clear, actionable feedback that you can pass off to authors, no problem. But other times, the feedback may not be so straightforward, either because one or more reviewers’ individual comments are confusing or because some reviewers have conflicting opinions about the submission that don’t have an apparent resolution.
Wendy Laura Belcher, associate professor of African literature at Princeton University and former managing editor of Aztlán Journal of Chicano Studies, offered helpful insights on preparing R&R decisions for authors in this past Scholastica blog interview. She advised editors never to send authors reviewer reports without commentary, but rather, to read reviewer feedback thoroughly and address any contradictions or possible points of confusion in their decision letter to the author, with guidance on how to proceed.
Belcher noted that some authors may end up thinking they have to take every single reviewer suggestion into account in revisions if the editor doesn’t state otherwise, especially early-career researchers. For example, if a reviewer says a line in a paper’s introduction is “incongruous with the rest of the findings,” the author may not know whether that means they need to rework the entire body of the article or simply remove/reword the introductory sentence in question, which could lead them to spend more time on revisions than needed.
In addition to clarifying reviewer comments, be sure to address any that are particularly snarky or unconstructive. Authors will be more receptive to feedback if they feel that it is genuine rather than an attempt at one-upmanship. For advice on helping reviewers write constructive comments, check out this blog post.
Quick tip: If you use Scholastica’s Peer Review System, your editors can also edit reviewer comments before sharing them with the author as needed to remove commentary that’s overly harsh or irrelevant. We explain how in this help document.
Give reviewers structured feedback forms and R&R parameters
We’ve talked about what to do if your reviewers offer unclear or contradictory comments to the author. But what steps can your journal take to avoid having that problem in the first place (and save everyone headaches should the manuscript make it to the R&R stage)?
While you can’t eliminate the possibility of reviewer conflict, one step you can take to improve the consistency of the review reports you receive is to provide reviewers with a structured feedback form.
What do we mean by structured?
Rather than asking reviewers to provide open-ended comments on the strengths and weaknesses of a manuscript, give them a standard set of evaluation questions to complete, so they know which aspects of the submission to focus on. By setting clear expectations for referee reports, you can help reviewers avoid becoming preoccupied with outlining their opinions on tertiary concerns, such as grammar or writing style, that detract from the time and effort they could have spent considering more substantive issues.
Additionally, consider the level of feedback you need for each of your manuscript assessment areas and choose your question format accordingly (e.g., open-response, multiple-choice, Likert scale) to keep things as straightforward as possible. For example, if one of your questions is “Does this manuscript offer a novel contribution to its field?” and you’re looking for reviewers to indicate their level of agreement (not give a detailed explanation as to why they feel that way), go with a Likert-scale question rather than an open-ended response.
To prevent snowballing of suggested edits for manuscripts that receive R&R decisions, editors should also establish ground rules with reviewers for acceptable feedback during subsequent review rounds. For example, you might advise reviewers that you will not consider recommendations involving altering the structure of a manuscript after the first round of review.
Set clear deadlines and expectations for authors
When you decide to extend an R&R offer to an author or a manuscript transfer offer, as discussed above, it’s essential to set a due date for them to accept or decline, as well as clear next steps to keep things moving along.
For R&Rs, you’ll, of course, need to give authors adequate time to complete necessary edits, particularly if they involve additional analysis. Minor revisions might only take a few weeks, whereas major revisions may require a month or more. There’s no one-size-fits-all timeline for R&Rs, so editors should make the call on how long to give authors on a case-by-case basis, and then, as noted above, clearly communicate their expectations in terms of reviewer feedback that needs to be implemented versus suggestions that are “nice to have” or fine to ignore.
For manuscript transfer offers, giving authors a week to decide should be sufficient. A word to the wise: Be sure the transfer decision letters your editors send directly state that they have rejected the submission (or language along those lines) but are offering to cascade it to a different journal for consideration. You don’t want authors to interpret transfer offers as opportunities to send revisions, then you might end up with an unintended R&R submission!
In the case of either decision type, if you’re using peer review software, it’s a good idea to set automatic reminders for authors to keep them on schedule. Editors of journals using Scholastica’s Peer Review System can learn how to send R&R decisions with automated deadline reminders in this help document and how to send manuscript transfer offers with automated reminders in this help document.
Follow established editorial processes and make them transparent
Finally, no author likes to be left in the dark, wondering how long their manuscript will be under review at a journal.
One of the best ways to improve peer review for authors and reduce anxiety around R&Rs is to make your editorial processes as transparent as possible by publicly posting your peer review policies on your journal website. Let authors know what to expect between submitting their manuscript and receiving a decision, including the type of peer review you follow (e.g., single-anonymous, double-anonymous), how many reviewers you invite for each submission that makes it past desk reject, how long peer review typically takes, and what, if any, caps you put on R&R rounds. Setting a limit for R&Rs is highly recommended, going back to Wendy Laura Belcher’s past Scholastica blog interview on avoiding what she called “a merry-go-round of R&R requests.”
Authors want to know that their manuscript won’t get caught in a submission backlog or loop of endless revisions. They will appreciate insight into how your editorial processes work and the policies you have in place to make peer review as efficient as possible.
We hope you found these tips to improve R&R outcomes helpful! Have a question or additional advice? Let us know in the comments below!
