Editorial: How to respond to reviewers

Citation

Ratten, V. (2024), "Editorial: How to respond to reviewers", Journal of Family Business Management, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 709-709. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFBM-09-2024-309

When you receive a revise and resubmit request for a journal article, it offers you an opportunity to improve your article in order to get it published. This means it should be considered a positive outcome despite the time it might take to do the revisions. After you receive a revised decision, you should take a couple of days to digest its findings. Rather than revising straight away an article, you should think about what action is needed. Not all suggestions need to be implemented but should be considered.

It is helpful to have a plan about how you will revise an article. This means considering what is the most and least important in terms of changes. Some changes, particularly in terms of data collection or analysis, can take a long time and might change the findings of your article. Thus, it can be helpful to do major changes first and then minor changes such as grammar or spelling alterations last.

Each author or author team has a different approach to how they do revisions. Some designate one person to do the revisions, whilst some allocate different parts to each author. I would recommend, if possible, one person to do all the revisions in a co-authored article in order to make it easier to track changes. This can also provide a way for the revised article to be proofread and edited in terms of readability.

In terms of how to respond to reviewers' suggestions, it can be useful to do this in a table format with the left column stating the suggestion and the right column detailing how the article was changed. Some authors do not use a table format but use dot points and then summarise underneath the changes made. I use the word “suggestions” for reviewers’ comments and feedback because they are suggestions and are not mandated. This means respect should be given to what the reviewer is saying, but the authors should be cognisant of the fact that they are more knowledgeable about the article. Therefore, a good way to respond to reviewers is to say “with respect, but … ”, or “this is a good point however it will be addressed under the limitations or future research section”. When responding to reviewers’ feedback be aware that all reviewers will normally see the other reviewer’s feedback. Therefore, when responding to the feedback, it can be helpful to say what you have changed, based on the other reviewer’s comments.

Lastly, it is important that authors go beyond what the reviewers have suggested. This helps to show that the authors are aware and keeping track of new research in the field. It is helpful to include new articles recently published in the journal that you have submitted your article to in order to show that you are reading the journal’s articles. This will normally impress the reviewers by indicating that you are interested in the journal and up to date with the literature.