How To Revise Your Scholarly Paper Efficiently and Effectively
You have to revise the paper you submitted to an academic or scientific journal and you have to do it quickly amidst an incredibly busy term of teaching, research and administrative duties. You recognise that the editor’s request for revisions is a positive response to your writing and you certainly want to meet the deadline he or she indicated in order to be published in the next issue. The deadline is less than two weeks away, however, and it is going to be an enormous challenge to find enough time not only to make changes, but also to reflect on the comments you have received and make wise decisions to accommodate the editor’s requests and improve your paper from your own perspective as well. You need a strategy – one that will achieve maximum effect in a minimum amount of time – and you need it now, so the one I outline here may prove helpful.
Start with the largest issues. Yes, this may be exactly what you do not want to do because it always seems easier to begin with small details and gradually work into larger and more significant changes, but there is no time for gradual. There is also no time for doing more than is necessary, and one of the consequences of polishing details before you tackle major changes is that work on those details often needs repeating or adjusting due to the larger revisions. If, for instance, you have been asked to alter the content of your paper in significant ways or completely restructure your article to meet journal guidelines, it will be best to make these large-scale changes first. Such revisions are likely to take a considerable amount of thought as well as time, and they are also the sort of changes that you should devise and implement yourself as they can usually be done most efficiently and effectively only by a person who knows the research and the paper very well indeed.
Once you have made the major revisions that involve shifting and changing content and redesigning and reshaping structure, you can move onto smaller matters, and for at least some of these you will be able to solicit help. If the editor has pointed out that there seems to be some inconsistency in the data you have provided in the main text and the tables, you will be the person best equipped to examine and correct numbers and details quickly and accurately, but if it is simply a matter of the format of numbers being inconsistent, an accomplished graduate student eager for a little extra cash or a professional academic or scientific proofreader will be able to help you make the necessary changes. Similarly, if you have discovered that your references are incomplete and in the wrong style for the journal, you will probably need to review them and provide any missing information that would be difficult for others to obtain, but that graduate student could make the time-consuming changes required to produce the right style, and a professional proofreader can check the work to ensure that guidelines are followed with precision and consistency.
Engaging the services of a highly qualified professional who is well suited to polishing the details that many academics and scientists find tedious will significantly increase your efficiency and the quality of the revised product. Whether you choose to seek help or do it all yourself, however, it is always wise to have a colleague or mentor who is able to dedicate a little time to your work immediately read your paper once the initial revisions have been completed. While he or she is reading, you will have time to reflect on the changes already made and therefore be more prepared to do any final revisions that your colleague or mentor may suggest.
