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Issue 2 Misunderstandings

• Scenario 1: the reviewer misunderstood your writing

  • Your action: find the cause of the misunderstanding and fix the writing to help future readers avoid it

• Scenario 2: you misunderstood the reviewer

  • Your action: 

    • whenever a reviewer comment seems particularly incoherent or unfair, double check that you understood it correctly

    • reduce the chance of misunderstanding the reviewer and only read reviewer comments when you are in a constructive and open frame of mind; once you read a text and decided on how to interpret it, it's hard to step away from that interpretation

Do's

• wait before you read and even longer before you respond

• focus on the science

• cool your jets

• argue always from within your study

• treat the reviews as if a good friend said it

• address every concern, but not the praise

• be honest, fair and appreciative

• be clear & concise

• parochialism

  • what may behind it: manuscript misses a bigger picture, contains a biased sample of the literature

  • how to address: include references from multiple teams working on this issue, not only the ones you know best

• logical flaws: chain of argument appears broken

  • what may behind it: reader cannot follow your line of argument because they don't understand important steps in your argument

  • how to address it: make sure that the Introduction explains all core facts and concepts 

• too speculative: usually in discussion

  • what may behind it: the manuscript contains speculation in places where the reader expects to learn about findings

  • how to address it: follow the guidelines laid out for Discussion to speculate at the right moment in the narrative, and not too early, when the reader still expects to learn about your findings

• skipping: e.g. introduction (logical exposition) skips steps, which makes reviewers question your data interpretation later

  • what may behind it: the curse of knowledge - your text assumes that the reader knows as much about the topic as you do

  • how to address it: have your manuscript read by an outsider; you know so much about the topic, you are prone to skipping important steps in the rationale

• mismatch: research goals & hypotheses do not match up with approach and/or data

  • what may behind it: often happens when a project evolves, yet some of the writing is stuck in an earlier iteration of the project

  • how to address it: check that all parts of your manuscript are aligned (aims, methods, data, conclusions) and reflect the most recent iteration of the project

Example 2 Reviewer comment. In particular, it seems that a key question is what types of swimming styles are we interested in establishing and why? In this regard, this study doesn’t seem to offer much new insight.

Undiplomatic reply: There are many books cataloging swimming styles [refs]. Here we focus on one example that is less well understood and of interest to scientists working on underwater vehicle development: Swimming with multiple propellers for both propulsion and steering.

More subtle reply: We reworked key sections of the manuscript to avoid the misleading impression that we were aiming to describe a new type of swimming style.  In the revised manuscript, we emphasize throughout that this study is focused on a mechanistic understanding of one particular swimming style–swimming with a combination of undulating fins and jetting propellers, which has remained unstudied and yet is crucial for biological and bio-inspired swimmers.