Tuesday, September 9, 2008

R & R

Alas, not the fun rest and recreation kind.  I recently got an article back with a revise-and-resubmit recommendation.

I've often seen people complain about their readers' reports that it seems the readers hardly read the work, or at least wanted something very different. That's not the case here. Both of the reports are encouraging, and both offer concrete suggestions for improvement. And I think both reports are fair: these are indeed areas that need improvement.

One report will be fairly easy to address, I hope. The other will require some digging in the library and reconceptualization. What concerns me here, actually, is that the second report has two layers of comments. One layer requires putting my piece into dialogue with some a particular set of scholarship, which I think is manageable and a reasonable goal. The other layer may require a much more involved revision, perhaps even reconceptualization, of the project. I don't know that I can do that, at least not quickly, as it would require examining original manuscripts which I don't have. But, I'll see what I can do.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I tried to post on this yesterday, but couldn't get the visual verification to load. Truly, Blogger is a creaking old heap sometimes. Anyway, my inclination is to wonder whether you've asked the editor for advice? Try saying to them that the second report essentially sends you to making two different papers, one which would be this paper slightly revised and one which would be a different study, and would the editor accept the former sooner or prefer the latter later? If they say that resubmitting the lightly revised version would be acceptable, you have saved your ship and potentially have a future project idea too; if not, well, nothing lost at least. It's often worth trying this question, because the editor may well want papers sooner rather than later and the reviewer is under no such pressure.

clio's disciple said...

Good point. I may do just that; I think I'll review the reports again carefully to be sure of how I'm interpreting them.