I have a very unusual background / situation. I have made the interesting journey from being a patient diagnosed with a rare, untreatable disease (systemic sclerosis) back in 1990, developing a research-based treatment that worked (recently published case report), becoming an educator and patient advocate, and am now a published researcher with an appointment as a Fellow (Rheumatology) in the Dept. of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin. I do have graduate training in research clinical psychology from the early 80s and one published paper from back then, but I am in many ways a novice in writing formal research papers.
I recently completed a major, formal review paper (with four co-authors) that is under peer-review at a major research journal (Journal of Scleroderma and Related Disorders). I have already gone through one major revision but am getting feedback from one of the reviews (the other loved the paper and suggested no changes) that is basically saying that I really don't fully understand how to write a review paper like this and there are a number of issues such as putting things in the Methods section that should be in the Results or Discussion sections, etc. It is worth noting that two of my co-authors have published hundreds of papers each, but I do accept the reviewer's suggestions that I don't really know what I am doing.
So here is what I am looking for. Are any of you who have written major review papers (in the medical field) willing to read through the manuscript and help me to fix some of these issues that would be obvious to anyone who has gone through this before? You don't need to have an understanding of systemic sclerosis (or therpauetic plasma exchange, which is the topic of the review). These are questions about the structure and organization of the paper rather than the content (that seems to mostly be OK).
I have a very tight timeline as the revision to the manuscript is due on December 1st.
Thanks,
Ed
Why not send it to the journal which you think might publish it, let the peer review process give you feedback?
Actually, it is in peer review right now. The problem is that there were two reviewers who reviewed the first draft. One liked it and suggested no changes. The other trashed it said that it needed a lot of changes to be considered. Many of these were reasonable improvements so I made them and resubmitted. This time the same reviewer said the overall writing quality was still of low quality and gave several examples (which I can easily address). One of my co-authors (who has several hundred published papers) and one of the members of the Medical Advisory Board for the non-profit education/research organization I run, both think that what is going on has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. It is more about my lack of formal medical credentials (I am not an MD or PhD and am self taught). Believe me, I have run into this a LOT over the past several years. I actually have four co-authors who are all well-established in their respective fields and the first draft (which got trashed by this reviewer) was reviewed by one of the top researchers on this disease in the world and his overall assessment of that draft was "Great Job!".
So, I am trying to figure out if there are major issues with the paper because of my inexperience (this is the third paper I have ever submitted for publication - the other two were published fairly easily). This is a comprehensive review paper which is obviously a much larger challenge.
If the issue is the reviewer and not my writing, then I will make the noted changes and try once more with this journal and then take it elsewhere if I get comments like these again and it is rejected.
This particular journal uses single blinded peer review (I don't know who the reviewers are but the reviewer knows who the authors are). Ironically, my research background is in clinical psychology so I am fully aware that this is a terrible way to do peer review - it really should be double blinded.
The bottom line is this. I am trying to figure out if the issue is my writing, in which case I will continue to work on improving it, or this is a reviewer bias issue, in which case I will take it elsewhere if rejected again. I just don't have enough experience in academic publishing to make this determination. That is why I am hoping to get a few experienced authors to help me figure this out.
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