How to Tackle a Major Revise and Resubmit in Four Steps

A systematic approach for responding to feedback from journal article reviewers

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

So, you've just got that email that gives you a sense of hope and dread at the same time—your journal article was just given a revise and resubmit with major revisions!

First and foremost, yay! It is a major feat to get through this initial hurtle in the review process and to be asked to revise your work for potential publication. That said, you may skim through the reviewer comments and quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of feedback you have received, making it difficult to determine what those reviewers are actually asking for and how you will address their suggestions.

Ugh. You have already put in so much effort perfecting that article, and now you have so much more to do.

Today's post outlines the four-step process I use to tackle a major revise and resubmit. If you work in quantitative or scientific fields, these steps may differ slightly in context from my humanities and qualitative social sciences experience, but I think they are still useful as a general procedure.

Because the types of feedback you may receive vary greatly, I’m going to start with a hypothetical scenario to work through the following steps with. This will not cover everything you may encounter, but it can give you a place to start.

The Hypothetical Scenario

Reviewer 1: They've offered specific suggestions concerning additional scholarly sources, i.e., they’ve named some authors you should incorporate. Your task is clear: read and integrate those specified sources into your work. They've also emphasized the need for additional literature in various areas, which means you must locate and study materials that represent those particular bodies of literature and figure out where and how to incorporate them if they are indeed relevant and useful.

Reviewer 2: Their feedback is less explicit, but they express doubt regarding your argument and evidence. They make statements indicating disagreement with your assessment or, in some cases, even provide biting evaluations like "poor augmentation," "lack of thoroughness," or other critical remarks. Dealing with this type of reviewer can be more challenging since they do not provide clear instructions on what requires improvement, necessitating a bit of reading between the lines.

Now here’s how I’d approach both types of reviewer feedback: