After your manuscript has been accepted for peer review, you can expect to receive collected feedback from reviewers in what is known as a ‘peer review report’. The response time varies from journal to journal, you can find typical durations for different stages of the submission journey on our journal pages.
Although peer reviewers’ comments can seem overwhelming, there are certain strategies that can help you respond to peer reviewers appropriately – making the review process shorter and improving your chances of publication.
So, how can you best respond to peer review comments?
What is in a peer review report?
A reviewer’s job is to provide the journal editor with recommendations on how a manuscript should proceed by checking the rationale, the methodology, and verifying the conclusions and statements made in the paper.
It is common for reviewers to ask for additional lab work or analysis, or extra data in a peer review report. They may also comment on the quality and relevance of the references you used in your paper.
Sometimes, a reviewer might not understand a section of your manuscript and ask for elaboration or clarification.
They may also make comments on the language of the manuscript.
Receiving criticism of your work is never an easy experience. Some comments from reviewers can come off as blunt or unhelpful. But remember, the criticism is not personal - the reviewers are there to help you improve your paper.
When replying to peer review comments, you are expected to be polite and respectful in your response. It can be a good idea to wait for a day or two to digest the feedback before responding to the reviewers. A professional and respectful rebuttal letter could accelerate the peer review process and increase your chances of getting published.
Writing your response
Once you have read through every point, start to write your rebuttal letter. First, thank the editors and reviewers for their feedback. Then, summarize the changes you have made to the manuscript (for example, rewrites, new data, or new analyses). You can then provide a full point-by-point list of replies and changes.
Remember, you do not need to work alone. It is a good idea to ask all the manuscript’s authors to discuss reviewers’ comments as a team. This brings multiple perspectives to the review of the manuscript and makes the work process quicker and more efficient.
As you work your way through the report and respond to each point, state whether the manuscript's authors agreed with each comment and show any changes made. This may sometimes require extra lab work or data analysis which should then be included in the updated manuscript.
Showing these changes in your reply means the reviewers won’t need to revisit the manuscript to find them. Make sure you include the page and line numbers of where the changes have been made, for example:
Comment: [Reviewer 1 suggests making a specific change]
Response: As suggested by the reviewer, we have [explain the change] on [page number, line number]
A reviewer might have questions about a section of your manuscript. This is not necessarily a criticism of the science, but rather how it was explained. A common mistake researchers make in this situation is to provide further explanation in their reply without amending the paper itself. This can lead to a long and time-consuming dialogue with the editor. Rewriting the relevant section of the paper with clearer language is a much better approach.
If you disagree with a comment, politely explain why you did not make the change and provide a reason, for example:
Comment: [Reviewer 2 asks for extra information beyond the scope of the manuscript]
Response: Thank you for this suggestion. Although we agree this is an important topic, we believe that it is beyond the scope of the manuscript because [explain your reasoning]
Providing detailed feedback shows the reviewers you care about your paper and value their feedback.
Conclusion
Responding to peer reviewers might seem overwhelming at first as replying to criticism is never easy. To make the peer review process as efficient as possible, it is important to read the peer review report carefully and respond to reviewer’s comments one-by-one. Make sure you highlight the changes you’ve made in your manuscript on your response letter so the editors and reviewers can easily identify them. Remember that most published manuscripts have had multiple rounds of peer review, and that both you and the reviewers are united in the same goal: to get the best possible version of your work published.
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This blog post is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). Illustration adapted from Adobe Stock by Sam Jennings.