How to Easily Master the Revision Process

In a first step, your scientific manuscript will be evaluated by an editor that you need to convince of your work by a good cover letter and manuscript. If the editor thinks your manuscript does not fit to the journals’ scope or is not of sufficient quality, she/he will reject it and send you an email briefly explaining why your manuscript was rejected. Depending on the journal, you might receive a rejection within a few hours or 4 weeks. If the editor thinks your manuscript might be worth publishing, she/he will in the second step send the manuscript to approximately 3 reviewers. Finding a reviewer that fits your manuscripts’ research topic and who is willing to perform the review is sometimes hard for the editor, so this process might take some time. If you did not hear back from the journal 3 months after submission, you can send a polite email asking for the status of the manuscript. If they couldn’t find proper reviewers, they might ask you to suggest additional candidates. Once the editor received all reviews, she/he will forward you the decision, stating that the manuscript is either rejected, accepted as is, or what is more likely, might be acceptable after performing changes according to the reviewers’ suggestions.

Revising and resubmitting your manuscript

Most times reviewers provide some really good ideas for improvement, so take the time and change the manuscript accordingly. If you do not agree with the reviewer’s opinion, for example when the reviewer asks for a change that is based on a wrong conclusion or misunderstanding, please say so in your response. Explain politely why you don’t agree and why you won’t perform the requested change.

Once you answered all questions and comments and changed the manuscript and figures accordingly you need to submit all changed documents. Most journals ask to submit two manuscript versions, the first needs to mark all performed changes while the second is clean with all changes unmarked. The submission needs to be performed in the journal’s submission portal, similar to the original submission. The resubmission process usually doesn’t take that long.

Your revision will be sent back to the reviewers and they might suggest further changes or not. This back and forth between you and the reviewer might take up to two to three rounds. Even at this stage, your manuscript might still be rejected if the reviewer or editor thinks you did not answer all questions or performed all changes sufficiently.

Eventually, you will receive the message that your manuscript is acceptable for publication!…once you performed some formatting changes. Yes, even after you received the good news that your manuscript is accepted, you still may need to perform some formatting according to the journal’s requirements. Once all changes are performed, most journals provide proofs. This is a PDF document with your manuscript in the final format as it will be published. Here you are asked to perform a last check, if all parts of the document are properly added and aligned. A last check for typos is also okay but changes affecting the scientific content are not acceptable at this stage. Additionally, you will need to pay the publication fee. Please be aware that the journal will publish your scientific manuscript only after receiving the payment.

Finally, you are done!

Soon, your scientific manuscript will be online on the journals’ website and a few days later also available at PubMed central.

You can be really proud of yourself, you made it all the way through the writing, submission and revision process! Share your work with your colleagues by talking about it in social media! As more people are aware of your research, as more likely it is that your article will be cited.