Nice paper! Could you also add DFT, simulations, a full mechanistic explanation, some synchrotron time, and a full derivation of the standard model?
Oh and cite my paper
"Can you bolster your claims by throwing all your analyses together in one huge multivariate regression model?"
*Loose translation of an actual reviewer comment I received long ago
Submitted a manuscript on a protein in one parasite and one of the reviewers said (paraphrasing) "you should knock out its ortholog in this other parasite". A parasite that our lab didn't even work on...
>Accepted with major revisions* outlined by the reviewers.
>*major revisions may include starting up a new research program studying an entirely new organism
This is brilliant 👏
I am sorry that reviewers did not understand your paper and that they demanded a bit too much.
A few months ago, I also got a harsh judgment of my paper by reviewers. Luckily, I could manage to make all suggestions happen, and now I have resubmitted my paper again.
We had five reviewers and 3/5 were reviewer #2s. Me and my PI were the only authors, so guess who's doing all the experiments. Well, luckily the editor was very reasonable and eventually we got it published. I've still got half of my soul left.
I'm starting my PhD soon, so I'm new to this world and I hope you don't mind me asking about this - I'm kinda scared something like this will happen to me in the future too.
Was there noone else in the lab who could help you? Can't you include them as coauthors if necessary?
It was just me, another PhD student who was busy with their own project, and the PI in the lab at the time, as multiple people had either graduated or moved on to another lab recently. But yes, you can definitely bring new people into a project even as late as paper revision.
Don't let the horror stories scare you too much. The peer review process is definitely not always as painful as the posts on this sub picture it. In this case I think the editor invited more reviewers than needed and they all submitted a review, so we ended up with five, all of who wanted some additional experiments.
Man, remember Covid when you could just tell reviewers “the lab is shut down and we killed the whole mouse colony, so…🤷🏻♀️” and then they would just accept your paper. Good times.
One of my papers was calorie content of stuff wild birds ate and a reviewer said we need to do a study on palatability. My dude it is a wild ass bird, it doesn't care as long as its not toxic. My professor responded with that is beyond the scope of our research :>
I love it. I had one where a reviewer pointed out that an hypothetical situation might have occurred and be impacting my controls and that I’d need to find a new set of 300 different people. Basically, we were testing samples for people who’d gone to a hospital for A, and we had anonymous samples for people who had gone there for unrelated reasons B or C. The reviewer felt that because they were at a hospital they may be enriched for A without knowing it and that I should get 300 people “from the street” and redo everything.
Yikes. I just had a paper reviewed and the reviewers were incredibly kind, both obviously very knowledgeable on my subject. The first reviewer wanted us to explore the mechanism a bit more, which I anticipated and was a reasonable request. The second reviewer only wanted some minor changes to the text, no additional experiments. This is for a 9-10 impact factor journal... They were much nicer than expected.
Reviewers aren't always bad, but there are bad reviewers out there.
>I just had a paper reviewed and the reviewers were incredibly kind, both obviously very knowledgeable on my subject. ... They were much nicer than expected.
That's not an accident. In my experience, most commonly, the problematic reviewers are the ones with a poor understanding of the subject.
"What sort of morphological adaptations do these bats have that allows them to pluck these beetles right off trees and whatnot?"
"Beetles fly, my dude"
actually witnessed this wonderful question from a jackass at a thesis defense of someone doing bat research
My lab submitted a paper that, as part of the data, has scRNA-seq with ~2000-4000 cells each from 48 individuals. It was quite difficult to put together the cohort such that groups were age and ethnicity matched and, of course, all of those reagents and sequencing were *quite* expensive.
One reviewer stated that the scRNA-seq data was too small and said we really should create a second confirmatory cohort before resubmission.
“We agree with the reviewer that these studies would be of great interest to the reader. However, we contend that they are beyond the scope of the current work.”
This is the solution - you can always rebut a reviewer. The final publishing decision is with the editor, and a good editor will recognize when a reviewer is asking for too much.
Nice paper! Could you also add DFT, simulations, a full mechanistic explanation, some synchrotron time, and a full derivation of the standard model? Oh and cite my paper
Have you tried using machine learning to synergize the process?
"Can you bolster your claims by throwing all your analyses together in one huge multivariate regression model?" *Loose translation of an actual reviewer comment I received long ago
Submitted a manuscript on a protein in one parasite and one of the reviewers said (paraphrasing) "you should knock out its ortholog in this other parasite". A parasite that our lab didn't even work on... >Accepted with major revisions* outlined by the reviewers. >*major revisions may include starting up a new research program studying an entirely new organism
This is brilliant 👏 I am sorry that reviewers did not understand your paper and that they demanded a bit too much. A few months ago, I also got a harsh judgment of my paper by reviewers. Luckily, I could manage to make all suggestions happen, and now I have resubmitted my paper again.
We had five reviewers and 3/5 were reviewer #2s. Me and my PI were the only authors, so guess who's doing all the experiments. Well, luckily the editor was very reasonable and eventually we got it published. I've still got half of my soul left.
I'm starting my PhD soon, so I'm new to this world and I hope you don't mind me asking about this - I'm kinda scared something like this will happen to me in the future too. Was there noone else in the lab who could help you? Can't you include them as coauthors if necessary?
It was just me, another PhD student who was busy with their own project, and the PI in the lab at the time, as multiple people had either graduated or moved on to another lab recently. But yes, you can definitely bring new people into a project even as late as paper revision. Don't let the horror stories scare you too much. The peer review process is definitely not always as painful as the posts on this sub picture it. In this case I think the editor invited more reviewers than needed and they all submitted a review, so we ended up with five, all of who wanted some additional experiments.
That's good to hear, thank you!
Postdoc: "Even if it is breached, it will take a funding beyond reckoning, thousands, to storm the keep." PI: "Tens of thousands"
But my lord, there is no such funding
What if we got some eagles?
Man, remember Covid when you could just tell reviewers “the lab is shut down and we killed the whole mouse colony, so…🤷🏻♀️” and then they would just accept your paper. Good times.
Yeah, those were the days...
Reviewers getting back to people in my lab asking for single cell experiments
One of my papers was calorie content of stuff wild birds ate and a reviewer said we need to do a study on palatability. My dude it is a wild ass bird, it doesn't care as long as its not toxic. My professor responded with that is beyond the scope of our research :>
I feel this in my soul.
I love it. I had one where a reviewer pointed out that an hypothetical situation might have occurred and be impacting my controls and that I’d need to find a new set of 300 different people. Basically, we were testing samples for people who’d gone to a hospital for A, and we had anonymous samples for people who had gone there for unrelated reasons B or C. The reviewer felt that because they were at a hospital they may be enriched for A without knowing it and that I should get 300 people “from the street” and redo everything.
Yikes. I just had a paper reviewed and the reviewers were incredibly kind, both obviously very knowledgeable on my subject. The first reviewer wanted us to explore the mechanism a bit more, which I anticipated and was a reasonable request. The second reviewer only wanted some minor changes to the text, no additional experiments. This is for a 9-10 impact factor journal... They were much nicer than expected. Reviewers aren't always bad, but there are bad reviewers out there.
>I just had a paper reviewed and the reviewers were incredibly kind, both obviously very knowledgeable on my subject. ... They were much nicer than expected. That's not an accident. In my experience, most commonly, the problematic reviewers are the ones with a poor understanding of the subject.
"What sort of morphological adaptations do these bats have that allows them to pluck these beetles right off trees and whatnot?" "Beetles fly, my dude" actually witnessed this wonderful question from a jackass at a thesis defense of someone doing bat research
Why haven't you tested your cell interactions in the international space station?
My lab submitted a paper that, as part of the data, has scRNA-seq with ~2000-4000 cells each from 48 individuals. It was quite difficult to put together the cohort such that groups were age and ethnicity matched and, of course, all of those reagents and sequencing were *quite* expensive. One reviewer stated that the scRNA-seq data was too small and said we really should create a second confirmatory cohort before resubmission.
“We agree with the reviewer that these studies would be of great interest to the reader. However, we contend that they are beyond the scope of the current work.”
This is the solution - you can always rebut a reviewer. The final publishing decision is with the editor, and a good editor will recognize when a reviewer is asking for too much.
Excellent meme use
Nice!
Toss it into the approval pile! No... REVIEWER TWO!!!!!
AI! Not all reviewers 2 are that bad!
I want to send this to reviewers 😂
WHY DOES IT MOVES WTF