Tag Archives: revision

Revision requests from journals: Time to negotiate!

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Revision requests from journals—when you’re lucky enough to receive them—represent golden opportunities to negotiate: with reviewers, as I’ve suggested before, but also with coauthor(s).

Consider some of the many topics that may require at least an implicit negotiation with your coauthors:

  • Whether the revision is doable
  • Timelines and deadlines
  • How to respond to reviewer requests
  • Who will do what
  • Who will contribute what
  • Who will get the final say
  • Any implications for authorship

And these are just some of the salient examples. To make revisions negotiable, consider the following negotiation principles that are particularly critical for these situations:

  1. Integrative rather than distributive negotiation: You and your co-authors presumably share the same goal: to get the paper published at the journal that just returned it. Therefore, and in spite of any creative differences that may arise, the pie is more expandable than fixed. What’s good for the goose is generally good for the gander. It’s helpful to keep that in mind at the outset, and periodically when the revisionary road gets bumpy.
  2. Trade-offs rather than value-claiming: The parties to a revision request might be tempted to engage in a distributive, value-claiming competition over apparently fixed pies, like who will rewrite what. But why? Why fight over a single issue when there are so many to choose from, and when several could be bundled for mutual gain? In particular, the various parties to a revision request may often find it easier and/or more pleasant to do different things. Maybe one party can easily collect new data but has no time to write, while the other has oodles of time for writing but no mechanism for data collection. In this case, it’s probably better to have one author do all the writing and the other all the collecting, as opposed to arm-wrestling over the writing alone.
  3. Information exchange rather than offer exchange: When several authors differ about the appropriate response to a reviewer comment (for example), the temptation is for each party to strenuously make their case. In other words, each party is essentially tempted to make an offer and see which offer predominates. That’s ok, but it’s often better for each party to stop making proposals and start probing the reasons underlying the other parties’ positions. “Why do you feel so strongly that we need to scrap that study?” A question like that often surfaces a vivid experience, paper of which you were oblivious, or underlying philosophy of science that makes the strenuous position a lot more understandable.
  4. Contingency contracts rather than immediate decisions: Oftentimes, reviewer comments thrust co-authors into a lively debate about how extensively to rework the paper. “That argument won’t make sense” or “That experiment won’t work,” one side might say, only to have the other strenuously disagree. The parties could continue to debate it or simply let the argument and/or experiment speak for themselves. In other words, they could decide to let the author who believes in the argument or experiment craft it or do it, then collectively determine whether it makes sense or works (respectively). That approach—akin to the negotiation strategy known as a contingency contract—is often more productive than debating ad nauseum.
  5. Post-settlement settlement rather than static agreement: Responses to a revision request often take an extraordinarily long time. Agreements reached at the outset about who will do what, how the team will respond to reviewer comments, or what the timeline will look like often seem sheepishly out-of-date as the arduous process unfolds. Rather than slavishly sticking to the original agreement, why not occasionally renegotiate a deal that’s better for everyone as new facts come to light—essentially the strategy known as post-settlement settlement?

In sum, revision requests are wonderful opportunities—opportunities that every scholar worth their salt dreams of. But the receipt of the request is not the end but the beginning of the process, as the authors then need to negotiate the terms of an arduous and extended undertaking. By treating the revision request as an opportunity to solve a very complex problem with very smart people rather than an opportunity to wage a self-focused battle, all authors can fulfill their dreams and remain friends to reflect on it.

Saving time by learning to trust yourself

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In a world where work-life balance seems like a quaint anachronism, most of us have to find every possible efficiency just to get our jobs done—especially when working on difficult tasks that require multiple rounds of revision: detailed reports, complicated analyses, complex pieces of software code. Though efficiencies on such tasks are often hard to come by, I’ve gradually learned to appreciate the relevance of an important lesson from negotiation research: the importance of trust.

Whereas negotiation research urges people to trust their counterparts, though, I’ve learned that complicated tasks make it equally important to trust myself! Indeed, I’ve come to realize that trusting myself—and especially the work I’ve already completed—can make even the hardest tasks more negotiable. Here’s hoping a short blog post can convince you too.

So imagine yourself working on a long and difficult task requiring multiple rounds of revision. A few lessons from the research on trust in negotiations that transfer to the inherent negotiations with yourself:

  • Assume trustworthiness: Negotiators are advised to assume their counterpart is trustworthy, and thus give themselves at least a fighting chance of starting a virtuous cycle. Likewise, when you have to work and rework the same difficult document, you might want to assume that the you who typed the prior version was just as trustworthy as the you who’s reading it now. In other words, make the necessary corrections when you reread, but don’t spend an inordinate amount of time second-guessing yourself over minor judgment calls.
  • Build trust over time: Even if they start with low levels of trust, negotiators are advised to intentionally build trust with their counterparts over time. Likewise, as you labor through numerous difficult professional tasks over the course of a career, try to give yourself increasing amounts of latitude each time. That is, cultivate an increasing appreciation for your own level of trustworthiness (see #1), trusting your initial intuitions more and more through time.
  • Don’t do anything untrustworthy: Negotiators are advised to avoid doing anything that would destroy the trust of their counterparts. Likewise, as you build your trust with yourself (see #2), take care to avoid any actions that would undermine your subsequent self-trust—by typing an important document while sleepy or suffering the influence of strong emotions, for example. Trust only builds when people are consistently trustworthy.
  • Incorporate any priors: Negotiators are always advised to incorporate any prior knowledge about their counterparts into their trust decisions. If a counterpart has lied before, chances are he hasn’t suddenly decided to reorganize his entire life around the categorical imperative. Likewise, if you increasingly trust yourself but start to identify some situations in which you yourself are not very trustworthy—sections of a document you know you struggle with, for example—distrust yourself enough to know that you’re going to have to focus your revision efforts there.

Over time, I’ve learned that trusting myself not only helps me complete high-quality tasks much more efficiently. It also feels a lot better than doubting myself constantly and redoing my own work for a negligible benefit and a considerable time cost.

How do you decide whether to trust your prior work?