In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:
What are the norms for making minor edits after a paper has been accepted (i.e., when the managing editor is awaiting author’s final version with typos fixed and reference style changed)?
I believe the best case scenario is to not introduce any new content at all, but there has (alas) been a few ways, upon rereading, that I see could improve the readability of my paper. I have been thinking of changes of the following sorts: (1) changing a paraphrase to a full quote (so that the opponent’s view is more clearly on the table); (2) mapping out the dialectics/signposting more fully (so the reader would more easily follow where I am going next); (3) walking through one same point slightly more slowly (if the original version was rushed); (4) adding a few summary remarks at crucial junctures (“I have just shown that . . .”).
None of this, of course, adds any new lines of arguments or changes any premises/conclusions. In principle, they are all aimed at readability, but I wonder if in practice these changes would be frowned upon, or — in the worse case — get the paper in trouble (i.e., verdict reconsidered).
Or maybe I have been overthinking this entirely: the managing editor may not even notice these changes, and would typically send my final version? I would be very grateful for advice or information!
I’m not 100% sure, but I think the norm is not to introduce new content. Correcting misspellings or a grammatically unwieldy sentence or two? Sure–but what the OP describes seems to like a lot of changes post-acceptance, and I guess I do worry about making significant changes like that. In cases like this where the OP really wants to make some changes, I wonder whether it might be best to ask the Editor what’s okay to do, and whether changes like these can be made. I’ve done that before with my papers in edited volumes and it worked out.
What do readers think?
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