Revise and Resubmit

My co-author and I are revising a paper for the nth time. 3rd? 4th? I don't remember. It's a really good paper. And it actually has gotten much better through this revision process. When we first sent it out, it was a series of three experiments. It was good, I thought. But the journal didn't think we quite nailed down the findings, so they rejected it.

Disappointing, of course, but we got busy and ran three more experiments, for a total of six. (And when you're testing babies, that's no easy feat.) It made the paper lots better! We sent it off again.

This time it came back with a 'revise and resubmit,' or rather what my friend Priti Shah used to call 'reject and resubmit,' which is when they basically say, You can resubmit this mess if you want to, but we still probably won't publish it.

Ironically, the two reviewers this time had exactly opposite objections. For example, we had said that a subset of the experiments could be considered a replication of X, with X being a well-known finding in the field.

Reviewer 1 said, "This isn't interesting, it's just a replication of X!"

Reviewer 2 said, "This doesn't count as a replication of X!"

Sigh. But this kind of situation isn't as bad as it seems. Every review cycle is a chance to improve the work. Here's our approach. 

• We never forget that it's our work. We are in charge. When we get reviews back, no matter what the verdict was, we go through the reviewer comments one by one. For each comment or suggestion, we decide whether we agree or disagree. 
• We follow the suggestions we agree with. Sometimes it's a big deal, like collecting more data. But we're always happy we did it in the end, because it makes the paper better. 
• If we disagree, we draft a polite response explaining why. 
• When we've made all the changes we're going to make, we write a cover letter back to the editor explaining what we did (and didn't do) and why. 
• We send it off, knowing that if it doesn't get published at this journal, there's always some other journal. The important thing is that the work has gotten better as a result of this review process. 

A key to maintaining our equanimity through this process is that we don't get our hearts set on publishing the work in one particular journal. When authors decide that the work must be published in this journal, they are giving the editor all the power. Then the authors themselves feel helpless (frustrated, angry, despairing, etc.)

Whether your paper gets accepted by a particular journal or not is outside your control. It depends on which editor happens to get the paper, and which reviewers happen to read it, and how tired and cranky they are when they read it, and how open they are to new ideas, and countless other factors. You can't control it. Let it go.

Honestly, I can rarely even remember where any work of mine was published. What difference does it make? It's not like people get the latest issue of 'Trends in Cognitive Sciences' in the mail and sit down and read it cover to cover. People find individual papers online. As long as a paper has the right keywords, people can find it. So who cares what journal it's published in?

I know, I know: Impact factors, prestige, blah blah blah. I don't put a lot of stock in that stuff. For what it's worth, I serve on job search committees all the time, and I don't give a rat's hairy hindquarters where anything was published. I can assess the quality of work just fine by reading it.

Happy revising, my friends. May your effect sizes be large; may your writing be effortless; and may all your papers be accepted the next time around.