Reviewer Comments

I have commented before on the peer-review system that most technical journals and conferences use to screen manuscripts that are submitted. Let's say you want to get a paper published. You write up the manuscript and submit it. Then other researchers, who are ostensibly your peers, will review it and make their recommendation about whether it should be published, published after major revisions, or rejected. And almost all reviewers will suggest ways that the manuscript can be improved.

There are many positive and negative qualities about this system. One of the good things is that (when the system is working correctly), your work is being evaluated by people who are qualified to know whether the work is novel or not.

Recently, I received reviewer comments on a manuscript that I had submitted to a conference. And I couldn't help but chuckle because one of the reviewers wrote:

This paper is an excellent example of technical writing, from the organization of the paper, to the diction and grammar, to the clarity of the explanations of difficult subjects. From that point of view, it was a pleasure to read. Unfortunately, the statistics performed are all completely wrong.

I should note that the above is a paraphrase of what I actually received, and not a direct quote. What a slap in the face!

One of the negative things about the peer-review system is that you don't know who your reviewers are. So, you can't tell if they are a graduate student who doesn't know what they are talking about, and there is no mechanism to refute the claims given by the reviewers. So, if the reviewers are wrong, your only recourse is to rewrite the manuscript to be clearer.