Peer Review: How to Handle the Emotional Side
Peer review. It can be a helpful part of academia, but it can also be stressful and emotionally difficult to deal with when you’re on the receiving end of the reviews. There may be an academic or two out there who doesn’t feel a sense of dread when reader reports show up in their inbox, but I have yet to meet this person (if you know them, please connect them with me so I can learn more about their secrets!). This post is part of series of posts that deal with aspects of the peer review process, including how to write a helpful and compassionate reader report. There are many problems with the peer review process, so I’m trying to help make it clearer, easier, and less painful for you.
For those of you who are new to academia, peer review is a process used by most academic journals and scholarly publishers to try and ensure the high-quality of published work. In this process, editors who are considering publishing a manuscript send it out to other scholars (usually two or three per manuscript) who (hopefully) are knowledgeable about the subject matter. For journal articles, the process is generally double-blind, meaning the author and the reviewer do not know each other’s identities. For book manuscripts, sometimes the reviewers do know the author’s identity (so they can evaluate their scholarly credentials). Reviewers evaluate the manuscript and send back a reader report in which they detail the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses, including revisions they feel would need to be made before publication. These reviewers also recommend to the editor if the work should be accepted or not and, if they recommended publishing it, whether it should be accepted as is or with (major or minor) revisions. The editor doesn’t have to follow the reviewers’ feedback, but they definitely take it seriously.
Here I examine the difficult emotional side of receiving reviewer feedback and share some steps you can take to deal with the initial stress of receiving reviews.
Know your feelings are normal. If you feel anxious when facing reviews or maybe even the sense of dread I mentioned above (something I always feel myself), know that you are not alone. Remember that scholars invest a lot of time, energy, and care into their writing. It is easy to worry that our reviewers won’t understand our writing the way we had hoped (or worse, won’t be fair to it). But knowing that your feelings are normal and that they partly reflect your own investment in your writing can help you feel less alone and/or help you let go of the sense that you shouldn’t be feeling the way you are.
Don’t feel like you need to read them immediately. If you feel anxiety about facing these reports, don’t feel like you have to read them right away, especially if they come before a busy day when you have a lot of obligations. Put them aside until a time when you are mentally prepared to take them in (though, of course, don’t wait two months to look at them since the revisions may come attached to a timeline!). This can help you be in a good mindset when you return to them, which can help you have an easier time absorbing the feedback and deciding what suggestions make most sense to you. Once you read through them, it might be a good idea to take a few days or a week or two off to process the feedback and decide how you will proceed.
Try not to take them personally. Most of us work hard on our scholarly work and may have been drafting an article or book manuscript for years. It is difficult to receive critiques of projects we really care about and it’s easy to take them personally, to feel like the reviewer is saying that we aren’t good enough writers or thinkers. I know this is not easy, but try to put these feelings aside (or maybe it’s better to feel them, but try not to let them overwhelm your thinking). The focus of the reviewer should be on the piece of writing, not you as a person. It may help to remember that presses do not send every submission they receive out for review so just the fact that you have made it this far suggests that you already have a strong piece of writing.
Do not take an enraged reaction to social media. It can be tempting, especially if you receive a reader report that you feel is unfair, to share your rage in a ranting semi-public post. Please try not to do this. For one, we tend to forget about all the various people who we are connected to online (and on some platforms our posts may be shared with people who we aren’t connected to). Academia is a small world and it’s totally possible that your reviewer might see your post. This could hurt relationships or later opportunities (this person could be on a search or fellowship committee, they could be your friend, etc.). Although peer review is often double-blind, it isn’t always (in the case of book manuscripts), and even if it is reviewers can often guess the author’s identity. Maybe more importantly, ranting publicly can make you look like someone who isn’t willing to accept feedback or make you come across as difficult to work with. Share your rage with people in the inner circle, but try and keep it there. Note that sharing rage about injustices about the peer review process is different and definitely has a place in public platforms (see below).
Remember that peer review generally works. It does not always work and it can be damaging and harmful (see below), but this process can truly improve scholarship. I think this is because in general receiving feedback on our writing makes it better. I can attest that almost all the peer reviews that I have received myself (both through formal submission processes and ones done less formally with colleagues) and all the ones that I have read for my clients, have, ultimately, improved the manuscripts. Feedback pushes us to clarify our arguments, to rethink the focus of our writing, to translate ideas that felt clear to us into language that is clearer for readers. The reviews in and of themselves don’t improve our manuscripts, they help US improve our writing by pushing us to see it with fresh eyes and giving us new perspectives.
Do pay attention to sexism, racism, or other forms of discrimination in these comments. The above suggestion is not to say that you shouldn’t pay attention to various forms of discrimination that can come across in reader reports. Sexism, racism, and other forms of harmful bias exist in the peer review process. This might be directed towards the author or the topic (maybe being dismissive of particular topics or undermining their importance). If you identify such issues, this would be a moment to reach out to the editor at the publisher and discuss them with them. They may want to have another person review the piece or suggest that you ignore those comments altogether. This hopefully will also help them avoid this reviewer in the future and/or directly address their problematic comments with them. (Here are some ideas for how editors can help avoid sexism, racism, and bias in the peer review process. Here are some more; see especially figure one in this article.) If the editor doesn’t take your concerns seriously this might be a sign that you want to seek out another venue for publication.
Consider therapy. I suggest this elsewhere more broadly for anyone who finds themselves struggling in academia. It made a huge difference in my life and ultimately helped me decide that I needed to exit the academy. But if you find yourself feeling like receiving reader reports or any other aspects of academia are really getting you down, consider seeking professional help. Therapists can help us deal with the stress and anxiety of this profession as well as with specific issues that many academics face, including imposter syndrome. They can help us think about how we can improve our situations. They can help us dig deep to decide if we actually want to be there at all. Basically, watch for signs that your mental health is suffering. If it is, or if it isn’t but you feel a bit more support would be helpful, seek professional help. You can find therapists here.
Remember, it’s your manuscript. Keeping this fact in mind throughout the peer review process can help you remember that you have a lot of control over your manuscript. You do not need to (nor should you be expected to) implement all of these revisions (more on how to approach the revision process in a future post). If you disagree with the majority of the reviewers’ feedback or think it is truly unfair, you can always take your manuscript elsewhere. Before you decide to do this, I recommend talking with your editor. They may be supportive and helpful and perhaps will agree with your vision for the manuscript. But if they don’t and you realize that publishing in this venue will require changing your manuscript in ways that you don’t support, you can always walk away. It’s your writing and you’re the one who has to live with the finished product.
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Peer review is a difficult process and sometimes the hardest part is dealing with the emotional stress reader reports can lead to. I hope the above suggestions help ease these challenges and remind you that your feelings are shared by many others in academia. And, when you are a reviewer yourself, think about how you can make your reports useful, helpful, and supportive. Similarly, if you end up in an editorial role at a journal or press, consider how you can work to make this process as fair and painless to authors as possible. In a future post, I’ll look at the more practical side of what to do after you receive your reader reports but, for now, good luck with your writing and thinking.
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