I've just received reviewers' comments back for a paper where the first author is a student. This is their first experience of peer review, and the comments made them cry. PLEASE, when doing reviews: think about the real person at the other end and whether you can be a bit nicer in tone - ThreadSky

lucyfoulkes.bsky.social • 86 days ago

I've just received reviewers' comments back for a paper where the first author is a student. This is their first experience of peer review, and the comments made them cry.

PLEASE, when doing reviews: think about the real person at the other end and whether you can be a bit nicer in tone

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christineparsons.bsky.social•86 days ago

Sorry to hear!

My brilliant linguist colleague @rbkh.bsky.social and I wrote a column on this - perhaps useful to your student https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03394-y.

bettyblue168.bsky.social•86 days ago

Can you show them this from me?

naomiekas.bsky.social•86 days ago

When I am reviewing I always write it imagining a grad student as the first author. My tone has changed markedly. However, I still worry that something comes across/gets interpreted as being rude.

jholc.bsky.social•86 days ago

I was not prepared, as a grad student, for the difference in tone between anonymous peer reviews and feedback from an instructor. At that time, I completely misread essentially neutral, thorough, and helpful peer review comments as criticisms and never followed up with the manuscript revisions.

mattashby.com•86 days ago

Depending on how badly worded the comments are, it might also be worth feeding this back to the editor (after a decision is made on the manuscript if necessary). Editors can do a lot to stop people writing reviews that are not constructive, eg by providing feedback to the reviewer.

lucyfoulkes.bsky.social•86 days ago

it's interesting, it's not awful (I was trying to say to the student 'this actually counts as quite good!'). So it's nothing that an editor should intervene with, I don't think, just more a reminder of how crappy a reasonably-standard peer review can feel

lluaces.bsky.social•86 days ago

it’s really shameful. We had an experience like that a couple years ago and I wrote a very angry response back. Luckily the editor disregarded the reviewer!

lucyfoulkes.bsky.social•86 days ago

that's good - editors should definitely intervene when it's that bad

lluaces.bsky.social•86 days ago

This editor REALLY intervened after we say something. I went to find the review on BMC Psych (which posts them) and it wasn’t there 😀 (it also had some glaring errors which could have been a factor) so refreshing when peer review works.

lucyfoulkes.bsky.social•86 days ago

The kind of low-level work drama that I live for

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