(Hey how ’bout that, eh? You can, like, make these things public so that authors can see them.)

Review Guidelines for Medieval Leavings

On one-paragraph reviews: there’s a time and a place.

  • That time is: accept without revisions!
  • That place is: accept with small revisions outlined in this single paragraph!
  • But we’ve all gotten the other kind of one-paragraph review, the kind that feels like a passive-aggressive rejection. They appear in R&Rs demanding major overhauls, but deny us, the authors, the detailed recommendations we need to make those revisions in a successful way. These one-paragraph reviews are the anti-pedagogy. 

We’d like to avoid that at ML.

While I don’t think we need to have strict review structures in place, we might aim for something along the rough lines of:

  • A paragraph of what’s good (always lead with the good!)
  • A paragraph of what could be improved
  • If necessary, especially in a rejection, maybe a paragraph about what’s really broken
  • Some smaller points or line-edits

Many of you may have a good deal more to add to that, and that’s great, but longer strategies essentially expand on those basic areas, I think. 

ML-specific things to keep in mind:

  • The authors know we have their old reports to hand, so feel free to point to those in your reviews too
  • the exhaustion level of our authors. Unlike other journals, we KNOW our authors have already been through the mill with these articles–we know they are likely to be very tired and even bruised. Especially when we recommend major revisions, (and even moreso perhaps when we reject) we want to offer support and guidance, and maybe even a choice between longer and shorter revision paths 

We all believe we can help make articles The Best Ever, with Just One More Total And Complete Overhaul Recommended By Reviewer 2, but what if we aimed to help these authors make these articles Publishable? Making their ideas, their way, as good as they can be, within the limits of the exhaustion they already bear? 

We don’t have to accept pieces we think aren’t ready, after all. 

In short, as Rebecca Colesworthy said: “If you think a manuscript ought to be published at some point, in some form, then the primary question for me is, what can be done to make it as strong a publication as possible? The goal is strengthening not detracting and deflating.”