After submission, the editorial office will review your paper for a number of fundamental properties:

  • Is the topic appropriate for the journal?
  • Is the main finding new, helpful and timely?
  • Is the paper generally well organized and/or formatted according to author instructions?
  • Are there obvious errors or omissions?

If accepted for the peer-review process, recognize that review times may vary greatly. Some journals will post their expected turnaround time.

  • If you haven’t received reviewer comments or any other communication about your manuscript in a reasonable amount of time, contact the editorial office for an update:
    • “We submitted our paper assigned manuscript ID 12345 on June 1, 2023, and kindly request an update on the status of this paper.”
  • Once collected, all reviewers’ comments, along with any suggestions or instructions from the editorial office, are sent back to corresponding author with instructions on how to proceed with revision
  • Follow all instructions for submitting a revision. Some journals will require a copy with tracked changes and/or a clean copy.
  • It’s ok to ask for an extension of the revision deadline, especially if additional data analyses or research is needed to address editor or reviewer suggestions
  • An accompanying response letter is usually required which addresses each reviewer and editor comment or question individually.
    • Be sure that every change to the paper has been noted in the cover letter
    • Address each comment, even if no change has been made to the paper

Sample Response to Reviewers

(Date)

Dr. John Smith, Editor in Chief
Medical Journal

Re: Manuscript ID #MJ2020-01-114, Revision

Dear Dr. Smith:

We appreciate the opportunity to revise and strengthen our paper. We have added new data and further discussed the implications of our findings. Specific revisions are outlined below.

Reviewer 1, Comment 1: The authors should include a discussion about how their work differs from the report by Allgood et al (2018).

Response: We considered the work by Allgood and determined that our methods differed too greatly for proper comparison; thus we did not mention the Allgood work previously. However, we agree that discussing the discrepancy may provide some clarity, and have added several sentences addressing this in the Discussion section.ed in the chart in Figure 2 using a different method.

Reviewer 1, Comment 2: I suggest the authors rerun the data provided in the chart in Figure 2 using a different method.

Response: We thank the reviewer for this comment. We consulted with a biostatistician and have reworked Figure 2, which now demonstrates our results more clearly.

Reviewer 2, Comment 1: Why didn’t the authors address the most recent focus of this topic?

Response: We appreciate the recent and exciting news on this topic, but it is beyond the scope of the current manuscript.

Editorial Office Comments:

Comment 1: References are not in compliance with journal format.

Response: We have reformatted the references as required.

Again, we wish to thank the editors for the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We hope it now meets journal standards.

Sincerely,
Author M. Jones, MD