I just hate page limits
This is a typical situation for me: I submit a paper to a journal or conference that is just to under the page limit. I get review reports back, and each reviewer has a few reasonable suggestions to additional experiments or possible extensions or papers worth referencing. I want to do the extra work — it is reasonable and I will learn something from it — but there just isn’t room in the paper to write about it!
Right now, I’m editing a paper for Bioinformatics, where the page limit is seven pages. I’ve done all the work suggested by the reviewers but I’m practically putting it all in the cover letter instead of the paper. The cover letter is now as long as the paper itself.
What do you do in a situation like this?
The reviewers’ decision is based on the submitted paper, so there is a limit to how much I can remove. I cannot completely rewrite the paper, since the journal want me to mark up all changes (and I doubt that they will be happy with markups showing that I’ve changed everything). So with the submitted manuscript being seven pages, I can only make very minor changes to the paper, and I still need to find a way to address all reviewer comments.
It is an impossible task!
I guess I should always leave a page or so for the second submission, but usually I find it hard to get down to the page limit in the first place…
June 15th, 2008 at 8:18 am
I’ve faced a similar situation, and asked the editors for advice. They replied that the page limits are usually reasonably flexible, so just add in the extra data (with an explanation regarding the need for it) and it will generally get published in its extended form. Of course, this flexibility varies from journal to journal, so YMMV…
June 16th, 2008 at 5:19 am
It may also be advisable to consider whether the editors really want you to address every reviewer request with changes to the manuscript.
June 16th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Usually with Bioinformatics, you could pay your way out of it (there is a fee per page you go over the limit). The last paper I published there, they said that they preferred that we didn’t go over the page limit, though, so this time I try to stay below…
June 16th, 2008 at 5:46 am
Trevor: That is a good point, but unfortunately I have very bad experience with the editors actually getting involved much … there are some great editors out there, sure, but in my experience you typically just get a standard letter together with the reviews. They you have to submit your changes together with a cover letter addressing the reviewer comments.
I’ve only once seen an editor specify which of the reviewer comments he agreed and which he disagreed with (but that time it was necessary, because they were very contradictory).
June 16th, 2008 at 6:31 am
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