冷静应对拒稿：如何回复审稿意见

冷静应对拒稿：如何回复审稿意见

已有 5979 次阅读 2010-1-7 11:54 |个人分类:未分类|系统分类:论文交流|关键词:拒稿，审稿意见，学术论文，英语论文，论文写作，理文编辑

Dr. Daneil McGowan论文写作系列第十讲 —— Responding to peer reviewers: dealing with rejection

Dr. Daneil McGowan 论文写作系列的中文版本终于与大家见面了，希望大家继续支持！译文见下方。

Your papers will sometimes be rejected. It is inevitable. The percentage of papers that is accepted and published without the need for any revisions is very small, and even the best scientists, writing up the best science, will face rejection from journals or the need to make revisions before their paper is considered acceptable for publication. Rather than thinking of rejection from your target journal and requests for major revisions as a negative experience, it is important to realize that this is an integral part of the publication process that exists to make your paper as robust and complete as possible before it joins the ‘collective knowledge’ as part of the literature.

There are many different possible reasons for rejection from a journal, and most of these have been described in previous tips in this tips series. For example, if you submitted your manuscript to an inappropriate journal it is likely you will receive a rejection letter without the paper even being sent to review. By selecting an appropriate journal (see tip on journal selection) you will increase the chances that your manuscript will be sent out for review. Similarly, a poor cover letter might result in immediate rejection without review, so submitting your manuscript with a good cover letter is essential (see tip on cover letter development). Failure to follow the instructions set out in the target journal’s Guide for Authors is another possible reason for rejection and considered insulting to the journal editors, although it is likely that you will simply receive an invitation to resubmit in the correct format. Other reasons for rejection include flawed study design, poor written language, inappropriate or incompletely explained methodology or statistical tests, incorrect description or overstatement of results, lack of balance or detail in the introduction and/or discussion, or simply a lack of novelty (for example, if your study simply repeats something that has already been done before), significance or relevance. By critically analyzing your paper prior to submission, and considering all of the items that peer reviewers will look at, you will hopefully be able to identify any problems in advance. By following the advice in the tips in this tips series, you

will speed up the process from initial submission to publication and make the stages in between considerably less stressful. Therefore, it is worthwhile getting your paper into the best possible form before submitting it anywhere to minimize the likelihood of rejection.

In considering peer review and how to address it, it is helpful to think about how a peer reviewer would have approached your paper. Different journals will ask different things of peer reviewers, but in general they will be checking for the following aspects of good science and scientific writing, and asked to comment whenever any of these criteria are not satisfactorily met in the submitted manuscript:

Significance

What is the importance of the findings to researchers in the field? Are the findings of general to interest to researchers in related and broader fields?

Novelty

Are the claims in the paper sufficiently novel to warrant

publication?

Does the study represent a conceptual advance over previously published work?

Introduction

Does the introduction provide sufficient background information for readers not in the immediate field to understand the

problem/hypotheses?

Are the reasons for performing the study clearly defined? Are sufficient and appropriate references cited to justify the work performed?

Are the study objectives clearly defined?

Methods/Technical rigor

Are the methods used appropriate to the aims of the study?

Is sufficient information provided for a capable researcher to reproduce the experiments described?

Are any additional experiments required to validate the results of those that were performed?

Are there any additional experiments that would greatly enhance the quality of this paper?

Are appropriate references cited where previously established

methods are used?

Results/Statistics

Are the results clearly explained and presented in an appropriate format? Do the figures and tables show essential data or are there any that could easily be summarized in the text? Is any of the data duplicated in the graphics and/or text? Are the figures and tables easy to interpret? Are there any additional graphics that would add clarity to the text? Have appropriate statistical methods been used to test the

significance of the results?

Discussion

Are all possible interpretations of the data considered or are there alternative hypotheses that are consistent with the available data? Are the findings properly described in the context of the published

literature?

Are appropriate references cited in meeting the above criterion? Are the limitations of the study discussed

Conclusion

Are the conclusions of the study supported by appropriate evidence or are the claims exaggerated?

Are the significance/applicability/implications of the findings

clearly discussed?

Literature cited

Is the literature cited balanced or are there important studies not

cited, or other studies disproportionately cited?

Journal selection

Is the target journal appropriate?

Language

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