schriste@ssl

Submitted a new and revised version of my microflare statistics paper. Hope to hear the praises of the referee soon!

I’m currently in the end game of getting an article (on microflares) published in APJ. We’ve submitted our manuscript and received, through the editor, an email containing all of the referee’s comments. It was, thankfully, all in a nice numbered list broken down into “major” and “minor” concerns and, best of all, fairly positive. It is our task to deal with those concerns by either revising the paper or arguing against the referees point.

Maybe I just was not paying attention, but APJ gave me very little information on how to go through the referee-ing process. In any case, I came across this page by Kwan Choi while searching around for some pages on how to write letters to referees. It’s an interesting list of advice on how to handle the pressures of peer review. Some gems include,

• In a note to be transmitted to the referee, first thank him or her.
• If you cannot accommodate the demands, thank the referee for the suggestion, but offer explanations why they are beyond the scope of the paper or why it is not possible at the time.
• Do not say: “The referee’s idea is bad, but mine is good. Better to say, the referee has an interesting notion, but the proposed idea is also good, particularly in light of this or that fact.

I thought it was an interesting read for folks going through this fairly painful process.