The Review Process
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To: Editor, Archives of General Psychiatry
Dear Sir, Madame, or Other:
Enclosed is our latest version of MS #85-02-22-RRRRR, that is, the
re-re-re-revised version of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten
the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the goddamned
running head! Hopefully we have suffered enough by now to satisfy even your
bloodthirsty reviewers.
I shall skip the usual point-by-point description of every single change we
made in response to the critiques. After all, it is fairly clear that your
reviewers are less interested in details of scientific procedure than in
working out their personality problems and sexual frustrations by seeking some
sort of demented glee in the sadistic and arbitrary exercise of tyrannical
power over hapless authors like ourselves who happen to fall into their
clutches. We do understand that, in view of the misanthropic psychopaths you
have on your editorial board, you need to keep sending them papers, for if
they weren't reviewing manuscripts they'd probably be out mugging old ladies
or clubbing baby seals to death. Still, from this batch of reviewers, C was
clearly the most hostile, and we request that you not ask her or him to review
this revision. Indeed, we have mailed letter bombs to four or five people we
suspected of being reviewer C, so if you send the manuscript back to them the
review process could be unduly delayed.
Some of the reviewers comments we couldn't do anything about. For example,
if (as reviewer C suggested), several of my ancestry were indeed drawn from
other species, it is too late to change that. Other suggestions were
implemented, however, and the paper has improved and benefited. Thus, you
suggested that we shorten the manuscript by 5 pages, and we were able to do
this very effectively by altering the margins and printing the paper in a
different font with a smaller typeface. We agree with you that the paper is
much better this way.
One perplexing problem was dealing with suggestions #13-28 by reviewer B.
As you may recall (that is, if you even bother reading the reviews before
doing your decision letter), that reviewer listed 16 works the he/she felt we
should cite in this paper. These were on a variety of different topics, none
of which had any relevance to our work that we could see. Indeed, one was an
essay on the Spanish-American War from a high school literary magazine. The
only common thread was that all 16 were by the same author, presumably someone
reviewer B greatly admires and feels should be more widely cited. To handle
this, we have modified the introduction and added, after the review of
relevant literature, a subsection entitled "Review of Irrelevant Literature"
that discusses these articles and also duly addresses some of the more asinine
suggestions by other reviewers.
We hope that you will be pleased with this revision and finally recognize
how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then you are an
unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. You ought to
be in a cage. May whatever heritage you come from be the butt of the next
round of ethnic jokes. If you do accept it, however, we wish to thank you for
your patience and wisdom throughout this process and to express our
appreciation of your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would be happy to
review some manuscripts for you; please send us the next manuscript that any
of these reviewers sends to your journal.
Assuming you accept this paper, we would also like to add a footnote
acknowledging your help with this manuscript and to point out that we liked
this paper much better the way we originally wrote it but you held the
editorial shotgun to our heads and forced us to chop, reshuffle, restate,
hedge, expand, shorten, and in general convert a meaty paper into stir-fried
vegetables. We couldn't or wouldn't, have done it without your input.
Sincerely,
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Dear Dr.
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my decision letter concerning the
above-referenced piece of excrement.
I have asked several experts who specialize in the area of research you dabble
in to have a look at your pathetic little submission, and their reviews are
enclosed. I shall not waste my LaserJet ink reiterating the details of their
reviews, but please allow me to highlight some of the more urgent points of
contention they raise:
1. Reviewer A suggests that you cite his work EXCLUSIVELY in the
introduction. He has asked me to remind you that he spells his name with a
final "e" (i.e., Scumbage), not as you have referenced him in the last
version.
2. Reviewer C indicates that the discussion can be shortened by at least 5
pages. Given the fact that the present Discussion is only three pages long, I
am not certain how to advise you. Perhaps you might consider eliminating all
speculation and original ideas.
3. Reviewer D has asked that you consider adding her as a co-author.
Although she has not directly contributed to the manuscript, she has made
numerous comments that have, in her view, significantly improved the paper.
Specifically, she believes that her suggestions concerning the reorganization
of the acknowledgments paragraph were especially important. Please note that
she spells her name with an em-dash, and not with the customary hyphen.
4. Reviewer B has asked that I inform you that, even though his suggestions
were not mentioned in my decision letter, this doesn't mean that he is an
imbecile.
5. My own reading of the manuscript indicates that the following problems
remain:
a. By "running head," we do not mean a picture of your son's face with
legs attached. Please provide a four- or five-word title for the paper that
summarizes the report's most important point. May I suggest, "Much Ado About
Nothing"?
b. Please make certain that you have adhered to APA stylebook guidelines
for publication format. Please direct your attention to the section entitled,
"Proper Format for an Insignificant Paper" (1995, p.46).
c. Please submit any revision of the paper on plain, blank stationery.
Submitting the article on Yale University letterhead will not increase your
chances of having the article accepted for publication.
d. Please doublecheck the manuscript for spelling and grammatical
errors. Our experience at the Archives is that "cycle-logical" slips go
through most spell-check programs undetected.
Yours sincerely,
Prof. Art Kives
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If your original submission had been as articulate as your most recent letter,
we might have avoided this interchange. It is too bad that tenure and
promotion committees at your university do not have access to authors'
correspondence with editors, for it is clear that you would be promoted on the
basis of your wit alone. Unfortunately, it's the publication that counts, and
I'm sorry to say that the Archives is not prepared to accept this revision.
We would be perfectly ambivalent about receiving a ninth revision from you.