3 Steps to Respond to Reviewers’ Comments About Your Qualitative Health Research
Last week I mentioned in the blog post that I’d continue building on a conversation about academic publishing triggered by Episode #48 of Cathy Mazak’s podcast- Academic Womxn Amplified. So, here I am! This week’s focus is on how to respond to reviewers’ comments when publishing qualitative health research.
I think it’s safe to assume we’ve all had an array of both positive and negative experiences with reviewers’ comments and feedback. In my case, I must say that most reviewers I’ve encountered had valid and important comments about my work. I believe that this is the case for the majority of reviewers’ comments we, as people invested in academic publishing, read and respond to. For one of my PhD studies, with women facing difficult life circumstances during pregnancy and postpartum while living in rural areas, it was through a thoughtful and very thorough (open) review process with two BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth reviewers that I was able to truly finalize my data analysis. Their comments were pivotal in how I ended up describing and framing rurality in the paper. Before their review, I was stuck and was not able to understand the source of disconnect I could see and feel in my own writing.
By sharing this, I want to encourage you to embrace most reviewers’ comments as opportunities to make your manuscript stronger and fine-tune your writing. With this being said, it’s not always easy to read and digest reviewers’ comments (especially if they “sound” abrupt and/or condescending, which in my opinion is unnecessary) so I’m sharing three steps I take to make revisions less painful to complete.
Step #1 –Take a walk.
When I see an email in my inbox from the editor of a journal, my heart starts beating faster in anticipation and I secretly prepare myself for a rejection (armor up –as Brené Brown says). Then, I open the email and find the manuscript is accepted upon revisions or needs revision. This is great news but, in that moment, it’s hard to feel excited because I have already started reading the list of comments from reviewers. Some make me embarrassed that I missed something so trivial the first time, some make me worried about the research I conducted, and very few make me proud of my work.
So what do I do? I inform my co-authors about the decision, what the next steps and timeline will be, and I take a walk. A “walk” isn’t always an actual, physical walk...it usually means moving on with my day’s activities as I had planned to do before the email arrived in my inbox “screaming” to be opened!
I firmly believe we need to pause before initiating any response. We need to breath, acknowledge the small victory within that email, and accept that there will be work to do before the final acceptance comes through. Because we’re writing qualitative findings, chances are that high that we’ll need to revisit our methods, fill in gaps identified by reviewers, describe rigor more in depth, and do all of this while being concise. More on how to do this in step #3! But before…
Step #2 –Prepare for your revision work.
I don’t remember who taught me the strategy I’m about to share with you (I’m 99% sure it was my amazing Masters’ supervisor) but, not surprisingly, it’s the same process Cathy describes in the podcast episode I mentioned above. I prepare to answer revisions by creating a word document table (with two columns) where I copy each comment from reviewers in its own row on the left-hand column and address it in the right-hand column. Why do I think this step helps? In all sincerity, I think it divides what feels like an elephant into bite-sized pieces I can manage.
Step #3 –Answer every comment, but only change what makes sense to you.
Because I’m talking about qualitative health research, I feel comfortable saying no one knows the data better than the researcher “on the ground” does. As such, I don’t think you, as the researcher, need to go along with every single comment and suggestion reviewers make; however, you do need to address them and, sometimes, justify your analytical and methodological decisions (even if they seem obvious to you). This is when I would pull out the references that guided my qualitative work, as well as the data that I collected from, and generated with, participants or through text, art, etc. Another common instance where I address reviewers’ comments without changing the manuscript happens when I believe there might be a breach in confidentiality or the potential for participants to be identified in their research settings.
Overall, it’s up to the journal’s editor to decide what to do when you politely refuse to address a suggestion made by a reviewer. A tip I’ll throw in here is addressing any “big nos” in a letter to the editor when you resubmit the revised version of your manuscript. This is an opportunity for you to demonstrate that you thought through the comment and made a conscious decision to leave the original text.
As I mentioned in the introduction, there are instances when reviewers are correct in pointing things out that ought to be edited, strengthened or removed. However, their suggestions might not be the best way to address the problem identified. If that’s the case, follow the same approach I described above and offer a well-founded rationale for how you addressed the comment differently from how they suggested {while agreeing with the comment itself}. I realize this may sound sneaky...but I prefer to think of it as strategic.
Lastly, do your best not to give up while protecting your integrity! If an editor or a reviewer was disrespectful, or the epistemological differences between you and them are too big to bridge, withdraw your submission and move on to another journal. This may happen but, to my knowledge, isn’t common. No matter what, keep your integrity by being truthful to your ethics, research methods, data, and most importantly participants.
Talk soon,
Maira