I am a senior full professor and native English speaker. Much of my scholarly work uses what I consider to be innovative methodologies which are not simply copied from some other study.
It is not unusual that I receive reviewer comments back that completely misunderstand my methodology and findings. Of course I often get valuable feedback, also.
I am wondering how many other people have experienced this problem of reviewers misunderstanding.
If you have experienced this, do you think that it is because of reviewer carelessness? Reviewers who are not qualified to evaluate your methods and findings? Issues relating to reviewers being native speakers of other languages?
I am happy to have replies saying that you have NOT experienced this, as well as the experiences of people who HAVE.
I am a young Nigerian researcher, whose first language is English (native proficiency). I have experienced this a couple of times and had to repeat the study using a copied methodology before it was accepted for publication. I usually assume this occurred because I am a budding reseacher, not yet recognised in the field and so do not have the right to an opinion on methodologies yet.
I have also had reviews that showed that the reviewer completely misunderstood the experimental methods and/or results, probably because they were not familiar with whole animal studies or preclinical studies (Clinicians reviewing strictly preclinical studies), and ask that it be rejected rather than seek clarification. I have also noticed that this occurs more commonly with journals who use the single blind review process and my assumptions are that the response was more racial than scientific. More intriguing is when a reviewer who from the diction in the review, one can conclude does not have a good grasp of the english language requests that the manuscript would benefit from language editing and the only language error I can see is my nationality.
Reviewers very frequently misunderstand our papers because they come from other times and fields:
1. We are the specialists in the field, pushing the new limits, not them. They are often stuck in following their historical heroes.
2. Next, the reviewers are not working in a field that is a superset of our field. They work in adjacent fields. The adjacent fields use different terminology, different technology and have a different slant on how to do research.
A great mail from a world renowned nomenclature specialist. How many of us has courage to say so?
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: *************
To: 'Subir Bandyopadhyay'
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 8:35 PM
Subject: My review of your MS on Phanera macrostachya
Dear Dr Bandyopadhyay:
I owe you a sincere apology for my carelessness in reviewing your MS, "Lectotypification of Phanera macrostachya Benth. (Leguminosae: Caesalpinioideae)" submitted to the *************************************.
You are perfectly correct that because Phanera macrostachya Benth. is validated solely by reference to the description in Roxburgh’s Flora Indica (1832), the name must be lectotypified by an element selected from the context of Roxburgh’s description of Bauhinia scandens.
My only excuse – and not a very good one – is that I started my review on 5 May reading the first few paragraphs and making what became Comments JM2 and JM3 and then had to put the paper aside for a few days. When I came back to it on 10 May (the date of the other Comments), I had completely forgotten that Bentham’s name was validates solely by reference to Roxburgh’s description and concentrated instead on your incorrect – and as it turns out irrelevant – argument that the Larsens had not cited a single specimen.
Again my apologies.
Best wishes
***************
Prof
The researcher is best placed to interprete his/her research methodology, but since the outcome of the study will be relevant to other readers, the reviewer or co-author has to be on same page. The onus is on researcher to convince readers (both written and verbal). I have experienced similar quandary both in academia and consulting work; it is a tough journey to reach the promised land
I have also had reviews that showed that the reviewer completely misunderstood the experimental methods and/or results, probably because they were not familiar with whole animal studies or preclinical studies (Clinicians reviewing strictly preclinical studies), and ask that it be rejected rather than seek clarification. I have also noticed that this occurs more commonly with journals who use the single blind review process
A live example. This paper had been rejected by 14 different statistics journals. It finally got published by a multidisciplinary journal. Our paper is rejected depending on mainly two reasons;
- Poor English (In my opinion, this cannot be a reason for rejection, they should ask for revision)
- Not well-informed in the current state of statistics
Up to me, it is not only reviewer carelessness. If the approach you develop tries to shake the foundation of the discipline, they first try to dismiss it. Particularly, our paper contains two references [ BEST, J. (2004)., More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues., University of California Press. , HUFF, D., (1993)., How to Lie with Statistics., W. W. Norton & Company. ] which blame statistics and/or statisticians. We tried to develop a methodology which would construct coherence in statistics, but it was dismissed by (almost) all fields of statistics. I think that reviewers are sometimes more royalist than the king.
Article TO DETERMINE SKEWNESS, MEAN AND DEVIATION WITH A NEW APPROAC...
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