Revise and Resubmit
Responding to Reviewers’ Comments
If you have received a ‘revise and resubmit’ decision the first thing to note is that we mean it: revise and resubmit. Reviewers could have rejected the paper, so do not be disheartened by the decision, but equally, revise your paper. Whether you secretly think the reviewers are an out-of-date bunch that clearly do not understand your vision, or not (hopefully not), please assume that each reviewer intended their comments to be helpful. As such consider the following in your response to reviewers:
- Be professional in your response. We ask the reviewers to comment in the spirit of creating a generous community, we invite you to do the same in your response.
- Reviewers generally want to help you get your paper published in Capacious and so each criticism usually merits some kind of change in your paper.
- Make it easy for reviewers to understand what you have done to address their criticisms. If you have addressed multiple concerns by re-writing, or even removing, a whole section, then state what you have done – do not expect reviewers to remember your previous paper and notice the differences.
- Summarize how you have addressed each of the reviewer’s concerns, you can do this in a short paragraph, or in a bullet point form, for example:
Reviewer 1, comment 1: “The paper lacks a coherent argument and a clear conclusion, though the ideas seem interesting.”
Response 1: Thank you for your feedback on my argument, I have addressed your first concern by re-writing the introduction to include a much clearer thesis statement, i.e. “insert your glorious thesis of diamond-like clarity.” In addition, I have clarified the conclusion, please see page 5, which in short states “insert your thunderous concluding statement.”
- The clearer your response and the most capaciously you have taken on board the criticisms the quicker the route to publication.
Reviewers may request another round of reviews, they might respond to your response, or you might simply receive another decision from the Editors-in-Chief. Whatever the case your resubmission will be reviewed again, so your response will read and responded to, hopefully within four to six weeks.