Revision and Resubmission

If you have been requested to revise and resubmit your paper, then you are heading in the right direction. Revisions are usually classed as either "minor" or "major". These are not clear cut however, and what one person terms minor, another might term major. In general, minor refers to rewriting, small error corrections, presentation changes, adding or deleting a reference and other things that do not require much work on the author's part or dramatically change the paper. Major revisions can require additional research, sometimes extensive, much rewriting and reorganizing, more analysis, or any other change which is substantial.

When the editor requests that you revise and resubmit your paper consider the following:

• Make sure not to miss the time limit (if there is one) for resubmission. It usually lies within six months to a year of the invitation letter. It is also a good idea to confirm with the editor that you are planning to revise and resubmit the paper. If you working on a paper for a special issue, often the revision timeframe is shorter.
• If you choose not to revise and resubmit a paper, be sure to inform the editorial office.
• Read all of the reviews carefully along with any information from the editors (area editor or associate editor). Some suggestions will be easy to make - these include typos or mistakes, grammar and wording changes, minor reorganizations. Other suggestions will be more difficult to address. First, you may have conflicting suggestions from different reviewers. Second, you may have a complaint or suggestion that stems from the fact that the reviewer has misunderstood your work or made a mistake of his or her own. Third, you may have requests that would be hard to comply with including substantially more research work to be done. Fourth, you may have suggestions that you just don't agree with and don't want to do. Remember that your goal is not to satisfy any one reviewer, but rather to produce a sound and important paper that is readily accepted during the next round of reviews. To accomplish this, you will need to comply with the reviewer suggestions or to give an adequate rationale on why you are not doing so. There is no one set of advice for all papers in revision. If a request is relatively easy to comply with and will not detract from the paper, it is usually best to do so. If a request is difficult but will definitely improve the paper and perhaps is necessary to get the paper accepted, then you need to do it even if it requires much more time and effort. If a request is unreasonable or will detract from the paper, then you should decline it and explain why.
• Along with the revised paper you need to include a detailed list or explanation of how the paper was revised. The usual way is to develop a separate document for each reviewer which clearly addresses his/her recommendations, normally in the order made in the review. Keep your responses impersonal and professional. Be as diplomatic as possible while clearly making your point. Thank the reviewer for any special suggestions or extra work that he or she put forth to make your paper better. Do not gloss over suggestions that you did not act on. As a reviewer receiving a revision, there is nothing more irritating than to have your suggestions ignored in every way. If you could not or did not want to make a change suggested, state that along with your reasons.
• Make sure to update your references if needed. Check for new work and for updated citations of work that was not yet in print.
• In a cover letter, explain to the editor briefly how you have revised your paper as requested by the referees and how appreciative you are that they have a continued interest in your paper. If you have an issue with a particular reviewer you need to raise it in your correspondence to the editor.
• Don't rush to revise your paper. Good papers take time and time spent on revisions is just as important as the time spent on the original research and the original paper. On the other hand, do not let papers languish in revision. As time passes, your familiarity with the work will diminish and the original reviewers will also lose memory of the paper. You should submit revised papers in three to nine months although sometimes major revisions take a year or longer.
• If your paper had major revisions then the editor who handled the original will once again handle it and send it out to the original set of reviewers. Normally, a revised paper take less time in review however this is not always true. You can expect a second review to take from three months to a year.
• If your paper had minor revisions then the editor will check the paper and your responses and make a decision himself or herself. This is usually a quicker procedure and takes from one to three months. Occasionally you may have only one reviewer that would requests revision; in that case, the editor may send out the revised paper only to the reviewer with the major comments.
• Sometimes papers require another round of review (a second revision) or even two more. Usually these are more minor and go faster. Do not get discouraged or impatient. Good papers in good journals take a long time to achieve. The end result will be worth it.
• Sometimes a paper will get rejected after a revision. This is disheartening as you have already invested a lot in the reviewing process at this journal. However, your paper should be in better shape than it was originally and you should consider another journal to submit it to. If you feel that the rejection was unfair or not warranted you can appeal to the editor, however cases like these are rarely overturned. Once in a while an editor may agree to send the paper out to a fresh reviewer for an opinion in a disputed rejection.