(January 24th, 2012) The long wait is over. The 2011 top ten razor sharp comments from reviewers of the journal Environmental Microbiology are here. Enjoy reading and learn!
The 2011 referee’s quotes provide once more a vivid example of the comments one might potentially face, when submitting a paper to any journal. They are serious referees and undoubtedly possess a nice mixture of humour, sarcasm and inspiration.
But how to reply to referees doesn’t appear in any academic curriculum I’ve seen, so far. It is, however, a skill one must exert at some point in science. Therefore, I pondered a bit about appropriate responses and came up with this short guide, meant as a humble practice for all those PhD students struggling to get papers through.
Case 1: The Paradoxical Referee.
“This is a brilliant manuscript – however, the authors should split their work up, otherwise it is indigestible!”
Suggested Answer (SA): Didn’t know that brilliant and indigestible can be used in the same critic.
Case 2: The Sincere Reviewer.
“Whoever wrote this manuscript made a real effort to make the results section as incomprehensible as possible”
SA: I’m sorry!
Case 3: The Zen Monk Member of the Editorial Board.
“The transcriptomic data must have been trafficked and have about the same probability as has the proverbial herd of monkeys running over a computer and thereby writing the New Testament.”
SA: Oh, boy! I wish all those monkeys would also write my PhD thesis.
Case 4: Two Reviewers.
Rev. 1: “It was a pleasure to read this flawless and well-written manuscript.”
Rev. 2: “There are already many papers that address this question and most do not apply very stringent experimental procedures, so results are somewhat equivocal. The present manuscript is not different in this respect.”
SA: A) Good to see that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are still peer reviewing manuscripts! B) I’m glad that my main supervisor and his most direct competitor peer reviewed my paper!
Case 5: The One that Can’t Get Enough.
“Would like to write you a nice comment but my bored brain is unable to produce any cute observation. Please, send me science that will start fireworks in my brain!”
SA: Did you read about the new man-made H5N1 human-ferret-bird flu? That’s a whole New Year’s Eve of fireworks!
Case 6: The Reviewer à la Clint Eastwood.
“The subject of the study is interesting but the results are not really novel. The authors merely used somewhat bigger guns than previous studies and generated nothing but more smoke. There are also dozens of additional problems with the manuscript that I am simply not prepared to discuss in more detail on a Saturday evening.”
SA: The reviewer raised an interesting question: is it morally fair to do anything on a Saturday evening? However, this is outside the scope of our present paper.
Case 7: The One we all Want!
“For the record, I am not giving this a soft review. I really did enjoy this manuscript, and felt that it presented something new to the field and was well written. In addition, I learned something new, and that is a bonus...
SA: Perfectly assessed! My grandma is of the same opinion!
Case 8: What the Bleep?
“It was hard to bite myself through, but in the back I found some meat”
SA: Eh?!… I’m holding a barbecue next weekend!
Case 9: The Realist.
“There is more speculation in this article than actual data.”
SA: Nope.
Case 10: No Comments.
“One sample – one 16S rRNA, gene 454 library – would only be acceptable if it had come from Mars.”
SA: We, the authors of the aforementioned paper, can’t rule out Martian cross-contamination. This fact alone, however, does not alter the interpretation of the data set, which we are sure, is of earthly origin.
Our gratitude goes to the reviewers from the journal of Environmental Microbiology. We’ll be looking forward all year long to reading the next referees’ quotes!
Alejandrolvido
Photo: Fotolia/77SimonGruber