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How important is “referee-proofing” papers?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

How important is it to make a paper "perfect" — i.e., perfectly worded, perfectly organized, "idiot-proofed," etc. — before submitting it to a top journal? I often spend months revising papers before submitting them, even though this doesn't improve the papers much, simply because I'm worried that the slightest blemishes will earn me rejections.

On the other hand, I've never recieved a rejection based on minutiae, and referees always have opportunities to request small changes. So, it occurs to me that these painstaking revisions may not make any difference to my chances of being accepted.

Thoughts?

Interesting questions. I guess my own sense is that, the more one publishes, the more one may get a sense of the kinds of things that referees can get hung up on, and try to avoid those things. But, as the OP notes, they don't seem to have had any rejections based on minutiae, so maybe referee-proofing isn't all that necessary?

I'm curious to hear from other readers. What's your experience? How much time and effort do you put into getting a paper as "perfect" as can be before submitting?

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10 responses to “How important is “referee-proofing” papers?”

  1. pubs

    I’m early career and have 4 pubs, fwiw. Perfection is not something that I ever strive for, but I try to ensure that the manuscript is polished, engages with/cites appropriate literature, and makes some contribution to the discussion that I’m partaking in. Fussing over small stuff endlessly isn’t worth it, imo. However, it does take some time to get a sense for when a manuscript is “good enough” to be sent out. I think going through the submission/review process several times at different journals (and also serving as a referee) can help here. But, given the (far from perfect) peer-review system, there’s no way to be sure. I’d say just send your stuff out. Maybe start at lower-tier journals that have quick-ish turnarounds and see what happens?

    Reply
  2. Hermias

    I wouldn’t worry about grammar and spelling etc too much. If the reviewer likes the substance of your paper, they’ll overlook it. If they don’t like the substance of your paper they will note “this nitwit make a spelling mistake in the introduction, off with their head!” but it’s not determinative.
    I’d worry about the substance of the paper, but also (a) have you at least nodded at the relevant literature, especially papers appearing in that very journal, (b) tone – not coming across as overconfident or contemptuous of other views.
    It sounds like OP is procrastinating. I do this too. I recall someone telling me that Strawson’s Freedom and Resentment was written in 1 draft on 1 day. So, speedball it and let the reviewers pick up the pieces. I even sometimes wonder about leaving little mistakes for a reviewer to get distracted by so that they don’t pick up on more fundamental occult problems. I don’t do this though because it would be pretty conceited.

    Reply
  3. referee

    If you are fussing over a paper and with each read through you are only changing a few words, then you should probably send it in.
    I have refereed 200+ papers and as Hermias says, if the argument is weak, or the structure is poor, or the author has neglected or misrepresented someone whose view is important in the debate, I will also note in my report that there are many spelling mistakes (if there in fact many). It is just the final nail in the coffin, after wasting my time. But if the paper is fine then I generally just note the few things that should be fixed before acceptance, including spelling mistakes.

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  4. Tim

    It is not important. I used to spend a lot of time fuzzing over the exact wording and precise formulation of things. (I still do!) But the bottom line is that 90% of reviewers read your submission less carefully than you, the author, do. As a result, they are not paying attention to the very subtle ways in which you frame and formulate things. Sometimes they aren’t even paying attention to the very obvious and explicitly stated ways in which you frame and formulate things!
    The best advice, I think, is to edit the paper to where you are happy with it, and then let the chips fall where they may with reviewers.

    Reply
  5. academic migrant

    I was told to treat referees as grumpy and short tempered nasty people. They tend to decide to reject your paper on page 2. So it is super important to signpost and make sure that they have an absolutely clear sense of what you are going to talk about on at least the first two pages. Also spoon feed them the importance of your paper.
    And re grammar and typos. If you are an academic migrant, make sure that there are absolutely no mistakes. Saying this as an ESL.

    Reply
  6. Trevor Hedberg

    Rephrasing / rewriting to ensure that ideas are presented clearly can be important to ensuring that reviewers do not misinterpret your positions, but the OP’s description of what they’re doing sounds like it’s mostly just fine-grained editing. After one proofread, that will mostly be a waste of time. I’ve never heard of a reviewer rejecting a paper due to grammatical or spelling errors, and those errors would have to be extremely frequent and egregious to justify doing so. The proof stage of the publication cycle, which occurs after acceptance, is where grammar and spelling errors is usually where these errors are corrected. So I’d advise the OP to devote their energies elsewhere and submit their work without worrying about having a “perfectly” edited paper.

    Reply
  7. Sam Duncan

    My experience is that if a referee wants to find a reason to reject a paper they will, so after a certain point referee proofing is a colossal waste of time. (I had one goober reject a paper of mine for not “engaging with a seminal work” that was published in French like three months previous to his review and, more outrageously, was on Greek tragedy while my paper was on property rights). I would make everything as clear as possible and do a good job of selling your paper early on. Don’t bury the lede as they say in journalism. But referee proofing a paper is not only impossible it’s counterproductive. Not only can a referee always find a reason to reject if the paper just doesn’t give him a smurphy feeling but after certain point trying to referee proof a paper makes it objectively worse. Who wants to read through seven pages of what’s basically an annotated bibliography on everything published on this topic no matter how trivial and boring or four pages clarifying what the author is not saying. That’s just awful writing.

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  8. don’t waste your time

    There’s no point writing papers in order to convince readers already unsympathetic to your points. It won’t work and it’ll only serve to turn off sympathetic readers. Your focus should be on ensuring that as-and-when a broadly sympathetic reader is assigned to review your paper, that they’ll have an easy job recommending acceptance.

    Reply
  9. Nitpicky Reviewer

    The above comments seem like good advice, but to anyone else reading this: please do proof-read your papers for basic spelling errors, typos, etc at least once. And make sure the formatting is decent (or just learn to use Latex).
    I’ve reviewed several papers recently with lots of spelling mistakes, typos, and bad formatting. Including one that turned out, after acceptance, to be by some pretty senior people where the references clearly copied and pasted from other documents since they have not only different style but different fonts and font sizes!
    Such errors are never enough to reject your paper on its own. But it doesn’t put me in a good mood towards your paper because it suggests that you think your time is so valuable that you couldn’t take 20 minutes to fix your references up (etc). And anything you can do to put the reviewer in a good mood will increase your chances at least somewhat.
    I suspect this makes the most difference when someone is on the very edge between R&R and reject: professional and clean looking work raises my credence that they will manage to fix actual content issues ever so slightly.
    Of course, I think this sort of proof reading should take half a day at maximum for a really long paper, so it certainly shouldn’t be delaying your submission by months.

    Reply
  10. Nick

    Reviewers have been very generous to me with typos and whatnot. But I think every paper deserves a close readthrough with an app like Grammarly to ensure everything is correct. It’s not hard, and having typos can only count against you!

    Reply

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