Excellent advice from Chris Green on how to respond effectively to letters from editors to revise and resubmit.
My publication experience (including my forays as a reviewer) is similar to Chris' regarding APA style. I can only think of one journal that is OCD about APA style. Most journals I've worked with seem to leave the nits and lice of perfecting APA style to the copy editors. APA style has enough ambiguity in the fine details (commas, spacing and italics) and changes frequently enough on these minor details to support the wisdom of a decision to delegate this task to an expert copy editor who deals with these details on a daily basis. Life is short. I have better things to do. As a reviewer, I've seen authors submit manuscripts that treated APA style as general guidelines. When published, the work is considerably cleaned up (and not at the detailed request of the reviewers, whose comments I see as well as the letter sent by the editor). The problems with APA style that are most likely to create problems in the review are those that interfere with communication (failure to include all relevant statistical information, incomplete information in references, names in citations that don't match names in entries in the reference list). [One OCD journal excepted. :-) ] As authors, we should remember that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Many a manuscript has lingered far too long on a computer in a faculty office because it wasn't "perfect." Annette has a point: Women are more likely to fall into the perfection trap. Co-authoring with a few men has been good therapy for that tendency in me. :-) Make it good and get it out the door. Perfection can come later. Claudia _____________________________________________ Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor NSF UWF Faculty ADVANCE Scholar School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 – 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 [email protected] CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=18739 or send a blank email to leave-18739-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
