Reviewer’s Blind Review Comments to Author. Kindly enter your comments based on the fol lowing sections. Also please include text excerpt or Reviewers’ Comments and Authors Response Paper number: ADHOC-D Paper title: Reverse Back-off Mechanism for Safety Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks Authors: R. Stanica, E. Chaput, and A.-L. Beylot The authors would like to thank the area editor and the reviewers for their precious time and invaluable comments Response: The authors thank the reviewer for his kind words and his approval for publication. This particular study only used high volatile coal such as Pittsburgh seam coal to determine the TIC needed to prevent flame propagation as function of coal particle size. Comment: They overstepped, however, in accepting the Nagy () recommendation thatFile Size: KB
How to Write a Peer Review - PLOS
In the previous article in this series 1I provided pointers on what questions to consider and what information to gather to perform a fair and thorough evaluation of all sections of a manuscript. Once you have completed your evaluation of the entire manuscript and identified its strengths and weaknesses, the time arrives to put pen to paper or keystrokes to computer screen and actually create the peer review report that will go back to the editor and authors.
What you communicate to the authors and what you communicate to the editor will not be exactly the same, because these 2 stakeholders need different information and different types of feedback. Therefore, it is important as you write the manuscript review to understand that you are really writing 2 reports, although there may be overlap in what you convey to the editor and the author.
Therefore, reviewer comments to author sample, your review must be effective in giving each party the information they need. So, how do you write an effective peer manuscript review?
In this article I hope to give you some pointers to achieve this goal. As a peer reviewer, you have 2 important roles. The first is to inform the reviewer comments to author sample about the strengths and weaknesses of the submitted paper and to suggest ways that the study could be or could have been improved 1. The second role is to recommend to the editor whether the manuscript should be accepted, rejected, or sent back for revision.
This recommendation should be based on the value of the work in relation to what is already known about a topic, whether the question being asked is valid, whether the methods used to answer the question are complete and robust, and whether the answer adds to existing knowledge.
At no point do you make the decision about the disposition of the manuscript. That is the editor's job. Nor do you indicate to the authors whether you are recommending acceptance, rejection, or reconsideration after revision. Your review will be most effective if it does do not say anything that will put the editor in a difficult or no-win situation. Before you begin to write the review, make sure you are organized in what you want to say and what evidence you are going to present to support your comments to the author and the editor.
At a minimum, you want to provide the authors with a a summary of the paper, b a listing of major comments, and c a listing of minor comments. Try to present reviewer comments to author sample comments in an order that allows the authors to best follow your points.
Finally, write up a separate reviewer comments to author sample of the manuscript along with any special comments, and place these materials in the section of the evaluation form designated for comments to the editor. Remember that recommendations regarding suitability for publication go only to the editor.
When reviewer comments to author sample organize the review, remember that the editor can see all of your comments to the authors, so there is no reason to paste the same comments into the section containing the comments to the editor.
Doing so may seem impressive because you have now doubled the overall length of the peer review report, but you have not added any value. I recommend that you write a summary paragraph describing the content of the manuscript, the hypothesis or goal of the study, reviewer comments to author sample experimental design, the major results, and the conclusions reviewer comments to author sample by the authors. But why spend time summarizing the paper? Don't the authors know what they wrote about?
There are several reasons why adding a paragraph that summarizes the study described in the submitted manuscript can be beneficial to everyone, including you. First, a summary paragraph indicates to the authors and the editor that you have read the paper and have taken the time to summarize it. In a subtle way a summary lends greater credibility to your review. Second, it allows the authors to see whether your interpretation of their hypothesis, experiments, results, and conclusions is consistent with what they intended.
Perhaps you have misread or misinterpreted something important to the study that the authors can clarify in communications with the editor. Or, maybe the authors will see that their descriptions are unclear and need revision to improve clarity.
Third, the summary allows you to organize your comments as they relate to the hypothesis, experiments, results, and conclusions as you saw them. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the summary will help you and the editor remember the original manuscript when any revisions come your way.
The authors may take weeks or months to revise a manuscript and resubmit it. Add to this the fact that reviewers and editors are busy people and have other things to occupy their minds. If you also recognize that aging reviewers like me reviewer comments to author sample failing memories, reviewer comments to author sample, you will quickly realize that your summary, which was part of your original peer review report, may be the only way for you and perhaps the editor as well to recall the original study and what it was about, reviewer comments to author sample.
This aid to recall may bring you up to speed more quickly and make your job simpler the second time around. So, think of writing a summary as a useful exercise, rather than something no one will read, reviewer comments to author sample. Why separate into major and minor comments? Because this separation allows the authors to readily see the issues that were most important to you and that must be addressed.
Splitting your comments into major and minor categories also helps the editor when a revision is submitted, because the editor can better evaluate how well the authors responded to the most important issues regarding the manuscript. An editor may cut authors some slack for minor comments but will expect a higher standard for successfully addressing major comments.
Major comments are those that affect the validity of the study e, reviewer comments to author sample. Minor comments suggest changes that would add value to the paper e. Of course, you as the reviewer decide which category should apply for each of your comments, reviewer comments to author sample.
Trying to add some order to your comments is helpful for everyone. Why does it matter? Arranging comments in a random manner makes the author and the editor jump back and forth throughout the paper to recognize and understand your points.
To add order to your comments, consider listing your comments so they follow the presentation format used by the particular journal. Wouldn't it be easier for everyone involved to turn the pages or scroll down a computer screen as few times as possible and not have to jump from the Results back to the Introduction and then forward to the Discussion and then back to the Methods? Remember that the authors will respond to your comments in the same order you listed them. So, do you want to have to jump back and forth to try to follow the changes the authors made to a set of your comments for a manuscript you may only partly recollect?
Example 1 consists of a set of reviewer's comments for a submitted manuscript on a hypothetical topic. Pretend you are the author receiving these comments or the editor comparing these comments with those from a second reviewer. Which order would make your life easier? Which presentation style would help you identify the more important comments? Avoid writing vague comments. Tell the authors exactly what you are talking about. Remember, you are the one who must re-review the manuscript should a revision be submitted, so this exactness will benefit you if and when you are called upon to evaluate the revised manuscript.
Be specific reviewer comments to author sample your comments, reviewer comments to author sample. Tell the authors what you think that they were trying to say. Do not simply state that experimental details are missing, reviewer comments to author sample.
What details do you want to see? It never hurts to give examples of what you mean. Try to avoid basing reviewer comments to author sample comments on your opinion.
You can reduce emotional reactions to your comments by providing specific evidence that supports your comment or reviewer comments to author sample your point 2. If you reviewer comments to author sample that parts of the study are not novel, cite other published studies that have explored the same problem. Use existing guidelines or expert-panel recommendations to support your comments, reviewer comments to author sample. Cite other articles published in that journal as examples of the standard you expect.
If scientists were clairvoyant they would foresee any problems with a manuscript. Although authors are not mind readers, vague comments from reviewers unfortunately can force them to try it. For instance, authors can get frustrated when a reviewer's comments contain broad-stroke criticisms without any recommendations for specific actions, such as the form additional experiments would take 34. In The One Minute Manager 5Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson use an analogy that I believe is also a classic example of how the author—reviewer interaction often goes.
Imagine that submitting a manuscript is like the reviewer comments to author sample of bowling. The goal in bowling is to roll a heavy ball at 10 pins, which the bowler can see and has a maximum of 2 rolls to knock them all down, reviewer comments to author sample. But that would be too simple in the world of publishing. In this game, the pins are still there, but now a black sheet is in front of the pins.
Guess who is holding the sheet up. Yes, the reviewer. An author rolls the ball and hears the crash of pins. How did the author do? Does that sound like reviews you have received in the past? So be helpful to the authors. The most effective manuscript reviews go beyond just telling authors that they need to make changes or improvements. Effective reviews actually help the authors understand how they can satisfactorily address the deficiencies the reviewer has identified.
An effective manuscript review includes concrete suggestions for additional necessary experiments, how they might be performed, what new experimental details should be added, which statistical analyses might be more appropriate, whether the results can be interpreted in other ways, how the authors can distinguish their work from previous work, and so forth.
Even if the study has a fatal deficiency that cannot be corrected, try to help the authors learn from the mistake by indicating what the authors should have done during the study. Example 2 2 presents 2 sets of hypothetical comments—one unspecific and unhelpful to the authors and the other specific and helpful. Related to the earlier discussion on your roles as a peer reviewer is recognizing the importance of consistency in what you say to the authors and the editor.
Similarly, I have seen many benign reviews that said little about the manuscript but then recommended rejection without providing any evidence to support the recommendation. This inconsistency puts the editor in a difficult situation.
An effective peer review is one in which the comments to the authors and the recommendation to the editor are consistent. Would you like your work to be described with any of these adjectives? As a reviewer, you may not have much choice in the deficiencies you point out, but you do have a choice in the tone of the words you use and the way you deliver your message. So be considerate of the authors. At stake is not only your reputation but also that of the journal you represent.
Examples 3 and 4 present comments to the authors and editor for a hypothetical study on the diagnostic accuracy of interleukin-9 in prostate cancer. I tried to be cognizant of my roles as a peer reviewer. I separated my comments to the editor from those to the authors.
How to Respond to Critical Reviews
, time: 7:33Writing a reviewer report
Reviewer Code Reviewer’s Comment: Congratulations for establishing a unit dedicated to pelvic exenterations. Good results of complex surgical procedures Authors’ Response: Thank you for your valuable time in reviewing our manuscript. We appreciate your positive comment Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns. Comments from Reviewer 1 [How to respond to comments that you agree with] Comment 1: [Paste the full comment here and italicize it.] Response: [Type your response here.] Thank you for pointing this out. I/We agree with this comment Sample Peer-Review of a Fictitious Manuscript Reviewer A’s Comments to Authors: This is a prospective study that analyzed the factors associated with cancer progression after EMR of Barrett’s esophagus with high-grade dysplasia. Eighty patients underwent EMR and were followed every 3 months for 1 year, and every 6 months thereafter for 3 blogger.com Size: 99KB
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