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I've just received the reviewer's report on a book manuscript that I've edited with Gwen Hyslop. The report was positive but changes will need to be made. I thought I'd take the opportunity to share some of my experience of having my work reviewed, and how variable it can be.
My first 'proper' article was a nightmare. I had to do 3 major rewrites. Main issue - I wasn't focused on how to theoretically package the empirical materials. I just wanted to say 'here's a thing!'
https://asianethnology.org/articles/209
https://asianethnology.org/articles/209
Sometimes you just need to find the right home for an article. This one was part of a special issue that collapsed, then I waited 18 months for a desk reject, and then it got published with minor revisions - about 3 years after I wrote it.
https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/24733
https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/24733
Getting the right thing in the right place is something that continues to be important and not always straightforward. This blog post started off as a book chapter, but the editors and I agreed that it didn't fit the book. https://www.thechinastory.org/telling-the-china-story-in-australia-why-we-need-racial-literacy/
Sometimes revisions are primarily about tone and style. This happened with this article - getting the language was right and pitching the claims appropriately was tricky. I had minor revisions to make, but they were difficult. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2019.1662074
Sometimes I've decided to can an article after review. Have you read my article "The Road to Assimilation? Tibet’s Linguistic Diversity in an era of Infrastructural Intensification"? No, because I canned it after review. But I've used bits and pieces of the text elsewhere.
Sometimes review can help confirm intuitions about a piece that doesn't seem quite right.
The review process for this article was one of the most satisfying review experiences I've had. The reviewers had issues with the text, but we had already anticipated & addressed all of their concerns, so all they could do was note this. Minor revisions https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X1600072X
As a general approach, trying to anticipate and address issues in the text before review has always made for a good review process.
This one had next to no changes requested, but then we had to cut about 1,000 words from the text, which was excruciating. Always write to the journal word count. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741018000012
So that's just a sample of the range of experiences I've had with being peer reviewed.
And reviewer 2, if you're reading this: the most helpful reviews are always supportive and constructive. They identify what the author is trying to do and help them do that rigorously. Bad reviews are dismissive and/ or aggressive. They can be belittling.
I really enjoy reviewing articles. When I do reviews, I try to focus on basic scholarly standards of truthfulness, rigor & integrity. I don't see it as my job to tell the author what to say. I'm happy to give a pass to an author I disagree with if their work is sound.
Receiving critical feedback is always hard, but you make it harder if you're an arsehole about it.
Be rigorous. Be kind.
Be rigorous. Be kind.
