This Is Still an Issue: What 14 Second-Round Reviews Taught Me About Revise and Resubmit

The Response Letter

Reviewer comments can feel like a judgement of you. Here's what happened when I answered one that way, and then revised anyway.

In 2020 I wrote a paper in two weeks. Single-authored, qualitative: fifteen commercial farmers in Sydney and the social networks that kept them farming. I aimed for a major revision (done is better than perfect) and got one.

Reviewer 1 wrote that it was "questionable whether the statistics can really provide any scientifically valid information." Then: "This article would not be published in my journal but… may be published as a kind of case study if the editor is willing."

Here is what I wrote back:

I am concerned about the qualifications of the reviewer.

And, for good measure:

It is disheartening to receive a comment such as this. I am not a novice researcher nor is this my first peer reviewed publication.

Then I did the work. The reviewer had read a qualitative study as a failed quantitative one, and part of that was on me. I hadn't said plainly what kind of study it was. So I said it. I added the research design, the sampling procedure and a citation on saturation, and I gave a line number for every change.

The second round came back with one note from the editor: the author "has take[n] up the critiques by the reviewers carefully." One minor revision. Accepted.

The judgement stung because it sounded like it was about me and my identity as a researcher. The paper got published because I answered it as if it were about the paper. Which it was.

So what do reviewers actually decide on? I went back through my own reports as a peer reviewer to find out.

What Reviewers Actually Decide On

Across 76 first-round reviews that I sent back as a peer reviewer, the problems that decided my recommendation were structural: a missing argument, a report where a paper should be, and claims the paper didn't support.

I've written 103 peer reviews. Eighty-eight are in a folder I can still open; my records for the rest are incomplete. For last month's post I counted what I said in them. This month I read them again and sorted every comment into three piles: what kept the paper from being publishable, what made it a major revision, and what was housekeeping.

What keeps a paper from being publishable

Four questions decide where a paper lands. If one of them fails, nothing further down matters yet.

Can a reader state your core argument in one sentence? In 64% of my first-round reviews, I couldn't. In 13 of them the argument was there, buried in the abstract or the last page of the discussion, and I handed it back and said put it up front and structure the entire paper around it.

Is it a journal paper or a report? 79% reported data without interpreting them. I've written some version of this sentence for years: examples are not findings. They are the descriptive data that make up a report. Findings should be synthesized evidence that supports your core argument.

Is it one paper? 14% were two papers in one, usually a methods paper and a case study. It can't be both.

Can the study carry the claims? 42% reached past what the research design could support: cause from correlation, the general rule from one case, the why from survey data.

What makes it a major revision

The most common requests, in order: methods too thin to evaluate or repeat (86%), discussions that restate the results without interpreting them (83%), results reported in the order the analysis was run (79%), and literature reviews that list studies without saying what we still don't know (71%). Every one of these requires deeper thinking and rewriting. None of them is fixed by moving words around or a grammar tool.

What's left: housekeeping

The minor revisions make a paper cohesive (sections that connect), coherent (terms used the same way throughout), and complete (sample, ethics approval, a context map, n and %). And they cut what's interesting but not useful. Tangential material came up in 70% of my reviews: photographs, figures that repeat the text, statistical tutorials, a history lesson starting in 1590. My test, from a 2025 review: Is it important for the reader to know in order to read the paper? If not, delete it.

Grammar and syntax, for the record, never influenced my overall recommendation.

How to Respond

Reviewers read your response letter against their own first review. What moves a paper at round two is the structural change they asked for, made first.

Fourteen of my reviews are of revised papers. That's a small number next to the 100-plus I've written (I'll come back to that in a minute). But they show what I actually do with a response letter: I open my first review next to it and check.

The word I use most at round two is still. It shows up in 11 of the 14: "still written in the format of a report," "Introduction is still missing a core argument." It marks the places where authors worked around the problem without fixing it.

Three patterns separate the papers that moved forward from the ones that stalled.

They fixed the listable items and left the structural one. Abstract, sample bias, limitations: done. The paper was still a report.

They rewrote what was working. One team rewrote an abstract I hadn't asked them to touch. My round-two comment: "Actually, the previous version is better." The one structural change I had asked for went unmade.

They didn't decide. I asked one team whether their paper was about two farming practices or about why farmers adopt one over the other. At round two I wrote that the authors "need to decide what is the objective and reframe the paper around it."

Looking back at my own response letter, the moves that worked were small. Show the change, with the new text quoted and a line number. If a reviewer misread you, clarify, and change the paper anyway, because the paper made the misreading possible. Ask instead of complying: "Would the insertion be tangential to the topic of the paper? If preferred, I can insert." Name the limit when a request falls outside your data: "This is an interesting topic that was outside the scope of data collection." And admit what you don't know: "I don't know the percentage of farmers that sell through farmer's markets."

Before you write any of it, ask yourself one question: what meaning are you attaching to the comment? To me, "Would not be published in my journal" meant you are a novice. What it actually showed was that this reader couldn't tell what kind of study it was. That's the version I chose to fix.

Resubmit (Almost Always)

About nine in ten of my first-round reviews recommended major revision. Only 14 revised papers ever came back to me.

Here's the number I didn't expect. About nine in ten of my first-round reviews recommended major revision, which means an invitation to resubmit. Only fourteen of those papers came back to me.

Some went to new reviewers. But editors usually send a revision back to the reviewers who asked for the changes, so I assume most were never revised and resubmitted. Maybe it felt easier to send the paper somewhere else. Maybe another reviewer wouldn't read so carefully. But is that what you want?

Of the fourteen that did come back, four were close to done after one round: "This paper has been substantially improved." One took three rounds. In the first round I stopped commenting in detail, because there was too much to fix. In the second I wrote that the paper "has been improved, but remains weak," with "methodological flaws that cannot be improved by writing." The third version opened my review with "A MUCH IMPROVED draft! Really minor comments."

I don't remember exactly what those authors changed. I remember the feeling when the third version landed. Relief, I think. And a tinge of pride. They dug in, dug deep, and came out with a publishable paper. They didn't leave.

There are times to take the comments and go elsewhere. If the changes would need new data, major additional analysis, or a different study, consider moving on. But take the review with you. It's the most careful reading your paper has had, and chances are the next review is going to see a lot of the same issues.

Before You Answer

A reviewer has already done the slowest part of a revision: reading your paper closely and writing down where they got lost.

That list arrives with no tone of voice. You supply it. So before you open a blank response letter, decide which version of the comment you're going to answer. The one about you, or the one about the paper?

Revise & Resubmit It! is a self-paced workshop for exactly that moment: decoding what reviewers actually want, deciding when to push back and when to comply, and keeping the paper moving through a second round (and a third, if it comes to that).

Start your revision here

Footnotes

Don’t forget to check out my videos on the Publish It! YouTube channel. I upload new content regularly so subscribe if you are interested!

If you are ready to Draft It! check out The Essential 10-Week Workshop – a self-paced course with tutorials, community discussion board, and workbook designed to guide you in preparing your first draft in 10 weeks for submission to a peer reviewed journal!  

And while you are at it—join the Publish It! Community and share your experiences with other academic writers. It’s free!