
Our client received provisional acceptance to their submitted manuscript, and needed assistance addressing extensive reviewer comments and requests for additional data, as well as edits that would definitely place their manuscript well above the word-count limit. This is the conundrum on submitted manuscripts that are already at the word limit imposed by the journal. Reviewers do not generally concern themselves with such unimportant matters like meeting journal specifications.
Our client was referred to us by a co-author of the article, who inquired from an existing client if they knew a capable writer who can assist with this task. We discussed the issues in detail and after some consideration, came up with a plan of how to approach the rather extensive comments from the reviewers, including a request for additional data that was actually outside the scope of the project.
With a few weeks left before the resubmission deadline, and after several discussions, we got the task done. A major issue was maintaining the integrity of the research presented while addressing the additional requirements of four reviewers without exceeding the word limit. The final task was quite daunting, that of putting ‘pen to paper’ (fingers to keyboard) to prepare what is a critical part of addressing reviewers comments, i.e. a comprehensive document itemizing author responses to individual reviewer’s comments, and explaining in sufficient detail how the issues raised were addressed in the revised manuscript. In some instances we disagreed with the reviewer, but this had to be carefully crafted with sufficient clarity and justification to ensure that our viewpoint was understood. Our client also needed to submit a ‘marked-up’ and a ‘cleaned’ version in their resubmission – no small feat given that multiple co-authors had weighed in on the revisions also!
With all deadlines and turnaround times met, and team-work at its best, the manuscript was resubmitted with a day to spare. Two weeks later the editor-in-chief approved the revisions, and the manuscript was accepted for publication.
This is always reason to breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate!
“Thank you so much for your contributions in helping us reshape the article to address all the reviewer concerns. We look forward to working with you again.” SH
“Thank you for all of your time and efforts on the article – we were really impressed by the quality of your work.” LW