Resubmitting a revised manuscript is a crucial stage in the academic publishing process, following receipt of the review feedback. Authors are expected to go through their work once again and resubmit it.
This ensures that the work meets the expectations and standards. This article will help you go through each step and guide you in preparing and resubmitting your manuscript so that it meets the expectations of the editors and reviewers.
Step 1: Read The Decision Letter Carefully:
The first and most crucial step is to read the decision letter thoroughly. The letter will indicate why the manuscript was rejected and what minor revisions are required, or on what conditions the manuscript may be accepted.
Identify what the overall decision is and check to see if the reviewers need minor changes or major changes. They would give terms like Minor or major revisions. Minor revisions refer to making minor changes in the manuscript, and major revisions refer to making significant changes in the manuscript.
Tip: Avoid responding quickly, give feedback, and remain there for at least 48 hours to approach it calmly and with an objective mindset.
Step 2: Organize The Reviewer Comments:
Once you have taken a look at the feedback organize all the comments that you have received by placing them in a certain order group similar comments together as reviewers make the same comments and also categorize comments based on suggestion and necessity some comments are just pieces of advice while others are mandatory changes that you have to make to the manuscript.
Tip: Create a document or spreadsheet that can help you categorize all these comments and include columns, and create a response sheet as well to these comments
Step 3: Develop A plan To Revise The Manuscript
Now that the comments have been organized make a solid plan that can help you tackle the comments of the reviewers, first of all, you can create step by step plan sheet that has all the tasks you need to perform to revise your manuscript if you have multiple authors you can assign tasks to them and also have time estimations on how much time it will take to make these changes and if some comments are unclear you can always reach out to the reviewers for clarification.
Tip: Include the technical issues as well as content revisions
Step 4: Revise The Manuscript
Now that the proper plan has been made, begin revising the manuscript and follow the instructions in your plan by making all the necessary changes based on the comments and clarifying arguments. If the analysis has been changed, then give visual representations to support that, and always check the instructions for authors to make sure your manuscript is according to the guidelines, including the file formats and figure resolutions, word count, and all citations.
Tip: The track changes feature in Google Docs and MS Word can be very helpful as well.
Step 5: Make A Detailed Response Letter:
Among the most crucial documents is the response letter. This response letter gives you a chance to give explanations on how each comment was addressed. You can start with a brief introduction that thanks all the editors, and then list all the comments and write the responses to those comments. Also, highlight the changes that you made. You can do this by making a page at the start, highlighting all the changes made.
Reviewer 2, Comment 3: The introduction lacks recent references on machine learning in diagnostics.
Response: Thank you for this valuable suggestion. We have added three recent studies (Smith et al., 2023; Lee et al., 2022; Khan et al., 2023) to the introduction on page 2, lines 40–50, to strengthen the background on machine learning applications.
Step 6: Prepare A Clean Version Of The Manuscript:
Most journals ask you to give 2 versions of the script, one is the clean version and the other is the one that has all the tracking or markings and shows all the changes so that reviewers have an idea of what has been modified.
Tip: If revisions are long, you can consider adding a summary at the start of the manuscript to highlight the major changes.
Step 7: Check It Before Submission:
Before resubmitting, conduct a complete review of all the materials, proofread everything, check for typos, and check if the content is strong and compare it to the previous content. Other than that, check it for consistency to ensure that the revised manuscript coincides with the rest of the content. Don’t add contradictory statements and update all the headings, subheadings, and author affiliations.
Step 8: Resubmit Your Work:
Log in to the journals’ online submission system and submit your work
- Select the option to submit the revised manuscript
- Upload all the necessary documents
Step 9: Confirm The Submission And Monitor The Status Of The Manuscript
After you have resubmitted make sure that the files have been resubmitted and monitor the status of the manuscript as “Under Review” Always remember to be patient after the manuscript has been resubmitted it takes time for the editors to check and see if the manuscript has all the necessary changes or not. The review process can take weeks to several months. It is best to wait for the response till then.
Step 10: Respond To The Further Requests By The Reviewers
Sometimes after resubmission, the reviewers ask for more changes. It’s best to respond to them as quickly as possible and maintain a tone of courtesy, even if the process is annoying and frustrating.
Common Things To Avoid
- Ignoring the reviewers’ comments and failing to respond to them in a timely and professional manner
- Taking criticism too much personally and not seriously criticism is supposed to help you improve, avoid taking it to heart and try to analyze the criticism and respond to it professionally.
- Don’t submit your work quickly; it can often lead to mistakes and can create a bad impression.
- Incomplete response letters can also show unprofessionalism and can create uncertainty as well as reduce your chances of acceptance.
- Not double-checking your work and submitting it blindly can also lead to mistakes and a bad impression.
How Royal Article Can Help?
Royal Article helps you with every step of the resubmission process. Our experts analyze the decision letter carefully and devise a detailed plan of action for editing your manuscript. We take into account all edits and reviews that need to be made and enact those within your manuscript.
Once you approve of the newly edited manuscript we help you resubmit alongside a detailed report of all changes that were made.
Successfully resubmitting your manuscript takes time and effort and it involves more than just editing a bunch of text it requires proper planning and strategy and requires a professional and respectful approach by carefully responding to the reviewers’ comments and developing a proper plan in response to those comments can increase your chances of your paper being accepted.
