Navigating peer review: How to respond to peer reviewer comments – Minor revisions

A common outcome for a research article following initial peer review, indeed the outcome that you really want as an author, is the editorial decision ‘minor revisions required’. This means that the peer reviewers who looked at your paper following initial submission have decided that just small, minor changes will be necessary before it can be accepted for publication. Good news!

Considerations for Minor Revisions

This decision also means that from the journal’s perspective one of their editorial board members or the editor will now make a decision about your submission following revisions and that your article will likely not be returned to the peer reviewers. Having said this, it’s still hugely important to follow the ‘response to review’ document writing steps and show the editor that you are taking the process seriously. Address all minor comments comprehensively and try, if possible, to make all the changes to your paper that you are being asked to make.

• Can you compromise?
• Do you really disagree so strongly with that comment?
• Does it matter if you tweak that figure, use a different font or colour?
• Include an extra data sampling point here or there?

Provide another data table in your supplementary information. Your preferred outcome now is rapid publication in your target journal!

Adhere to the journal deadline

You will want to take your time to make sure you do a good, comprehensive job revising your paper, while at the same time adhering to the deadline given to you by the journal. Publishing schedules are set months if not years in advance and so the quicker your paper is back in a journal workflow system at this stage, the faster it will be copyedited, proofed, typeset, receive a document identification number (DOI), and appear online. Journals always get bottlenecked in late November and December as authors scramble to try to ensure their papers are stamped with that years date rather than the next one!

Do a careful final check

In summary, a decision of ‘minor revisions required’ is a very good outcome for a submitted article. Take your time, however, to ensure that you do make all requested changes and write a comprehensive ‘response to reviews’ document. Do a careful final check (including a careful spelling check) before sending your files back to the journal: this might be the last time you see your paper before it is typeset and you check the proofs. Ensure all your figures, tables, and supplementary files are ready for publication. There’s nothing worse than silly mistakes in published articles!

Read next (fourth) in series: Navigating peer review: How to respond to peer reviewer comments – Major revisions

Read previous (second) in series: Navigating peer review: Sitting and waiting – What can you do? What should you do?

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