Biophysical Society Newsletter | July 2017

15

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

2017

JULY

of this manuscript, and will publishing it advance the mission of the journal? Therefore, it can help to point out important recently published work by yourself and others that relates to the manuscript. It is also good to remind the editor of the larger impact of the work on medicine, basic science, or technology. Some of this persuasion means pluck- ing text from the Introduction or Discussion of the manuscript, but it also requires stepping out to more of a 30,000 foot perspective and persuading the editor in a way not unlike a grant application. Be specific and persuasive without being grandiose. What makes an effective review? Now that your manuscript has made it to peer review, it will be read by two or more reviewers who are considered experts in the subject of your manuscript. The primary goal of the reviewers is to ask: Do the results justify the conclusions? A good review should provide substantive feedback that enables the editor to make an informed deci- sion on the manuscript and the authors to revise and improve the manuscript. Reviews generally begin with a brief summary of the findings and their relevance to the field, and may include the following: • A critical evaluation of the experiments, high- lighting any flaws in experimental design, ques- tionable interpretation of data, and any internal consistencies. • Highlighting previously published work (with references) that either contradict the work or may make the current experiments redundant. • Reasonable requests for further experiments, particularly control experiments but also obvious (important) experiments that the authors may have neglected. • Request for further analysis, reanalysis, or alter- native presentation of experimental data, includ- ing adding or clarifying statistics. • A critique of the text and figures highlighting areas of confusion, excessive verbosity, or flawed logic.

A good review will be civil, will avoid vague com- plaints, and will not harp unnecessarily on small details that may not be related to the principal point of the manuscript. The authors and editor are helped most by specificity and forthrightness in the evaluation of the manuscript. Revising and responding to reviews When the editor receives the reviews back, they then make a decision either to accept the manu- script as is (which is rare), reject the manuscript, or ask for major or minor revisions. At this point, the author has to make a decision. Rejections can be appealed in select cases, but this avenue should be used sparingly and should have strong justification. If the appeal is denied, then the authors should incorporate suggestions from reviewers before resubmitting to another journal, because it is likely that other reviewers will have the same complaints. If minor revisions are requested, the authors can generally address the comments by editing the text, improving the figures, or making other modifica- tions that don’t take much time. In this case, the authors should attend to these tasks immediately and resubmit the revision. In the case of major re-

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