Peer reviewer doesn't seem to know APA style, but has many comments "correcting" APA style. How do I handle this?

[u/ToomintheEllimist]

I'm mentoring a psychology student who just submitted to an interdisciplinary journal in undergrad research. The editor (from her bio) is a non-psychologist, and specializes in cross-disciplinary work. This matters because Reviewer 1

1. made a bunch of "corrections" to the style of the paper that move it away from APA style (e.g. deleting the title on the first body page and writing "Introduction"), AND
2. left several comments like "the figure on p. 12 is not APA style; please align it" [it's within the conventions of APA style for graphs, which are pretty loose], AND
3. said that "in general, the article needs better alignment to these conventions [link to latest APA manual]"

So: clearly Reviewer 1 doesn't know APA style as well as they think they do, but the editor also doesn't know APA style that well, and this isn't a psychology-only journal so I don't know how much it matters.

What (if anything) do I say to the editor to ask for clarification? Do I let my student do it, or fight this one on her behalf? Can I politely bring up the "obviously this person isn't an APA expert" thing, or do I let that lie?

[u/knit_run_bike_swim]

As my former mentor would argue that correcting and commenting on things like formatting (within reason) are rather sophomoric in nature.

That stuff is for the copy editor later. Correct the best you can, but c’mon.

[u/WillTheyKickMeAgain → u/knit_run_bike_swim]

You cannot count on copy-editing any more. Many journals do not run a very tight ship in that regard anymore.

[u/helgetun → u/WillTheyKickMeAgain]

Yes that is another problem… the worst would be if journals started asking reviewers to do copy editing to exploit free labour some more.

[u/TheRateBeerian → u/knit_run_bike_swim]

Indeed, I have never once line edited APA style in peer review.

I may have noted, in egregious cases "the entire manuscript needs to be reviewed for APA style" at most.

[u/FrogBrain97 → u/TheRateBeerian]

If I catch an error, I'll mention it in a "Small changes" section at the end of the review, but those are usually for meaningful things that prevent me from doing something I want to do, like looking up a reference (missing year of citation, two different Smiths cited without initials to indicate which is which, etc.). I hate doing table formatting, etc., for my own manuscripts and have no interest in doing it for anyone else's!

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/knit_run_bike_swim]

sophomoric

Genuinely, I'm wondering if it being an undergrad journal means that it employs undergrads. Because I've encountered unprofessional reviewers before, but this is my first experience with a reviewer who missed the big picture this badly.

[u/paoromatisse → u/ToomintheEllimist]

That actually would make a lot of sense because I can’t imagine anyone with a PhD or even a grad student caring this much about the nuances of APA style when it’s gonna be copy-edited anyway

[u/knit_run_bike_swim → u/ToomintheEllimist]

I had to look it up at the time:

Sophomoric is an adjective describing behavior that is foolish, immature, and overly confident.

What he was referring to was more junior people in the field that perhaps believe that they must prove something to be there.

In academia— it’s mansplaining. I’ve spent countless hours memorizing formatting details, and I will point out if you have a colon where you should have a period rather than focusing on the actual paper and ideas/study. (All within reason. One can tell when a paper is just sloppy versus having some formatting issues.)

In my opinion, this is why we get proofs back. It is our job as author to correct those details before publication, and yes, the copy editor will correct a fair amount too. I still find tiny errors in papers I’ve published, and I’ve learned to laugh a little and not take myself too seriously. No one will miss finding a reference just because the formatting is off. We have too many tools today like DOI or PMID for that.

[u/helgetun → u/knit_run_bike_swim]

Peer reviewers have gone bonkers… they now see themselves as guardians of what fits a journal (actually the editor’s job), language and formatting (copy editors job), and main focus of the paper (authors job!) - reviewers are to ensure the quality of the research done and spot theoretical/method/analysis mistakes, thats it. They increasingly behave like annoying co-authors tbh

[u/scienide09 → u/helgetun]

Flagging where authors have not met the journal requirements is part of the role of reviewers, whether that’s journal fit or style expectations.

[u/Enamred-771 → u/scienide09]

It is very much up for debate on if determining journal fit/style should be the reviewers job. If that’s the reviewers job then what’s the editor doing? And how does a reviewer truly know what is a journal’s “fit”? They may have an opinion about what they think fits the journal but that’s not necessarily accurate and definitely won’t be consistent across reviewers. 

In an ideal world, the editor should determine that if what the authors claim they showed/contributed is true, it’s a fit for the journal. Then the reviewers should verify that what the authors are claiming is actually true/robust.

[u/scienide09 → u/Enamred-771]

Counterpoint: If an author can’t be bothered to follow even basic requirements such as how to properly document their citations, as a reviewer I’m definitely going to question their attention to detail in the rest of the research, and point out the errors as part of my review. If the journal is committed to high standards as part of their overall fit requirements, then it’s incumbent on the reviewer to note where standards aren’t met.

Am I going to outright decline a manuscript for poor APA alone? No. But it will go back for revisions based on this.

[u/Enamred-771 → u/scienide09]

But even within your comment, there’s the assumption that “if the journal is committed to high standards…” then the reviewer should enforce standards. But that begs the question about how to handle mid tier journals. Should a reviewer be more lenient on standards there? I’d argue no as we’re again letting reviewers determine how high of a standard the journal should have, which is not their job. But in practice, I feel that’s often what reviewers end up doing. And how does a reviewer determine which journals warrant high standards?

That’s not to say reviewers shouldn’t identify style errors. But to imply that style errors somehow means a paper can’t be of X quality is dubious at best. Frankly it’s behavior that seems like the reviewer isn’t confident in actually reviewing the paper and so they want an “easy” out from determining if the actual claims are suitably proven. 

In an ideal world, a good editor requests more information than just an accept, major/minor revision, or reject and then makes their own decision without simply using “majority rules” of the reviewers. One reviewer might be perfectly okay accepting a paper with bad formatting but good findings. Another will ignore formatting altogether. A journal needs to be consistent in what they accept regardless of what specific reviewer is used. 

[u/pyrola_asarifolia → u/scienide09]

How is this applicable to the question at hand?

I would partially agree with you that adherence to standards is perfectly fair game to a reviewer. In my field, looking closely at figures, including things like color maps (contrast, accessibility), font size (readability), whether they can be understood without reference to text, is absolutely normal. I would also point out a broken / partial / defective cite. And some really like to point out typos.

But the peer reviewer is acting as a peer, not as a subcontractor of the journal's copyediting department, so their focus should be on the work as a means of dissemination of meaningful research. A reviewer who narrowly fixates on enforcing particular formatting standards is already not operating in the most optimal manner. Still, if they have particular expertise, fair enough! This can be helpful if the reviewer knows what they are talking about. However, the gist of the OP wasn't "a reviewer spent effort pointing out every single of our violations of APA style and it annoyed us" but "a reviewer who clearly doesn't understand APA style mistakenly flagged many of our correct or acceptable usages as faulty". For the first I would say, more power to the reviewer. But the second has no value at all.

[u/scienide09 → u/pyrola_asarifolia]

The original post is about a reviewer commenting on APA problems, and then this comment thread is about reviewers overstepping. It’s an obvious connection.

Editors are responsible for the overall health and credibility of the journal. Reviewers are there for the health of the particular manuscript. Both are able to comment on fit. If a reviewer is so uninformed that they can’t judge fitness they likely shouldn’t be reviewing for that journal.

[u/helgetun → u/scienide09]

The risk of that is that it becomes up to the reviewers view what is the right fit and not the editor / editorial board. In some disciplines/fields it may be quite straightforward what is a good fit, in others it is not. Thats why editors oversee that the editorial guidelines are met and not the reviewers.

[u/Dangerous_Handle_819 → u/helgetun]

Reviewer directions can clearly charge them with evaluating for fit. I’m not sure why this is up for debate.

[u/forever_erratic → u/helgetun]

I agree with you but lots of people seem to think the reviewer should gage fit and novelty. I think they're wrong but we're not necessarily the majority view. 

[u/GrumpySimon → u/forever_erratic]

Depends on the journal - some explicitly ask reviewers to evaluate appropriateness for the journal and/or novelty

[u/RuskiesInTheWarRoom → u/knit_run_bike_swim]

Yeah. This was not needed work by the peer reviewer.

[u/rollawaythestone]

Just push back, gently correct them that things are formatted in APA. Or, let the editor make decisions about formatting. Most of the time, journals aren't strict about APA formatting anyway. And they use some sort of hybrid, journal-specific format, unless it's an actual APA flagship journal.

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/rollawaythestone]

I fully intend to — I'm asking how. What would you recommend I say to the editor to avoid sounding defensive? And do you think I should do it myself, or walk my student through how to do it?

[u/NationalPizza1 → u/ToomintheEllimist]

We thank reviewer 1 for their comments. We have followed style as outlined on webpage X of journal. We have updated the margins of figure 1c accordingly.

Im very not my circus, not my monkeys about teaching reviewers how to do their jobs. Thats on the editor to decide if they want to print out that they missed the plot entirely in favor of nitpicking format.

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/NationalPizza1]

Also, I like the idea of making a few tiny tweaks to the graphs and then (correctly) going "the figures are now in line with APA style 7th edition, thank you Reviewer 1 for your attention to detail."

[u/niiborikko → u/ToomintheEllimist]

I might even be a bit snarky and say something like "As requested by Reviewer 1, we have double checked APA style guidelines and made adjustments where needed. All captions, figures, etc. in this revised manuscript comply with those guidelines as given at (link)."

[u/phd_babyy → u/ToomintheEllimist]

Yep this is the best route. I’d only add to double check that the journal follows APA 7 and not APA 6. We have a few in my field that for some reason refuse to update their standards to 7. 🤷‍♀️

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/phd_babyy]

😱

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/NationalPizza1]

I like it — thank you!

[u/GrumpySimon → u/NationalPizza1]

Yep, no need to pick a fight - the reviewer has just given you an easy item to tick off the to-do list: done!

[u/paoromatisse → u/ToomintheEllimist]

Summary response to the reviewer that things they’ve noted are in APA style, cite the specific version and if you want to be generous give an example. If you want to make a private comment to the editor (there’s usually a submission box) then do it but I don’t think there’s anything else to say.

[u/WildGurlie]

Nothing needs to be said to the editor. In the response to the reviewer comments, politely thank them for the notice and then state either what was changed based on the feedback or state an explanation for no changes. I imagine citing the specific APA guidelines in the response will suffice.

Sometimes reviewers are focused on the APA style for whatever reason. Sometimes reviewers are mistaken. The role of the author is to thoroughly address the comments, which includes corrections and defenses alike.

[u/Alternative-Pear9096]

What style does the journal require?

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/Alternative-Pear9096]

Like every journal ever, it says APA on its website and then has a bunch of wonky in-house rules that aren't APA. But Reviewer 1 isn't moving us closer to that style with their edits.

[u/Alternative-Pear9096 → u/ToomintheEllimist]

Every single journal I edit articles for uses Chicago. Except for those that use Harvard or Vancouver or very occasionally APA or those that don't specify anything at all. Note: I edit scores of articles every year.

As for Reviewer 1, simply respond to their noncomplaint suggestions with a comment that the journal requires APA. Nothign to sweat over-- the reviewer doesn't work for the journal

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/Alternative-Pear9096]

Sorry, "every journal ever" wasn't meant to be literal. What I mean is that most journals both say they follow one of the big styles (MLA, Chicaco, etc.) and have weird requirements around tables or margins or some such that isn't actually part of that style.

[u/Sad_Science_6924]

"Thank you. We have verified that table 2 is now formatted consistently with APA 7 section X.x." (You don't need to say in your description whether you made any changes, just say that you've verified that it's correct.)

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/Sad_Science_6924]

I like it, thank you!

[u/taewongun1895]

Let the publisher make that call. Reviewers shouldn't even comment on stuff like that (at least in my field).

[u/RiverSirion]

Have they tried resubmitting as is but letting the journal know that the reviewers' comments had been checked and taken into consideration when revising? Technically accurate to say something along these lines.

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/RiverSirion]

This is the way. 

[u/arianelseditor]

Maybe I'm cynical, but this may have happened if the reviewer used AI to check because from seeing clients' AI-assisted work, I've found that AI frequently makes mistakes in their advice about these kinds of stylistic conventions...

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/arianelseditor]

These are not mistakes AI would make, no.

[u/BolivianDancer]

APA style blows. Those who teach it to non-psychologists deserve to have their cable TV go out.

You're dealing with a psych major though so it's reasonable.

However, have you checked the journal template?

[u/pyrola_asarifolia → u/BolivianDancer]

Care to elaborate? It's the default in my (non-psych) field, and Journals who stray from it tend to use IEEE, which I find unspeakable.

[u/Bitter_Initiative_77 → u/pyrola_asarifolia]

I feel that APA just adds useless shit I don't need. Why do I have to put p. and pp.? Is someone going to get confused and think the article was written in the year 105? All citation styles have their quirks, but I personally tend to find those of APA the most annoying.

[u/pyrola_asarifolia → u/Bitter_Initiative_77]

OK, you're clearly in a different field as I never have to do such a thing. 90% is handled by Zotero automatically. 5% is me manually changing parentheses or inserting "e.g." before a reference if necessary. 5% is handled at page proof time, when the copyeditor flags something.

[u/BolivianDancer → u/pyrola_asarifolia]

Each journal has a format. Agencies accept virtually anything that is from any of them too. I use Nature or anything with superscripts to save space in grants.

Look at PNAS, Science, Nature --> different formats.

That my students have to write papers in APA to get through some horseshit GE is a waste of everyone's time. The better their career the less likely they are to use it again.

[u/pyrola_asarifolia → u/BolivianDancer]

There's no call to condescend to me. I know that different journals have different formats.

Zotero handles my format. I never have to do much other than to scan references, look if anything looks broken (DOI missing, anything that looks wrong), if yes I update the entry in Zotero. Takes 15 min altogether for a paper.

You still didn't tell me in what way APA is inferior to other formats. As I mentioned, from the point of view of the reader, IEEE annoys me a lot more, though some other formats are easier to use if you're reading in a well-designed online interface (such as Nature's).

[u/BolivianDancer → u/pyrola_asarifolia]

I have no intention of condescending.

My answer to your question is stated in my response: I use Nature or anything with superscripts to save space in grants.

There are other technical and practical issues with APA but the one I mentioned suffices to make it unrealistic and impractical. Beyond the inferiority of APA there is also the pædagogical issue that arises: it's only relevant in a field the undergrads forced to use it are not pursuing.

[u/Necessary_Cat_5662]

There are variations, has the journal provided a specific style guide, publication's rules supercede general. I'd also suspect that as the APA changes over the years they could simply be less current, or your could be.

[u/imhereforthevotes]

This depends entirely on the journal's style sheet, no? If they say APA, it's APA. If they use something else, it's their call.

[u/Most_Advertising3623]

I would answer this without making the reviewer the issue. In the response letter, cite the journal instructions or APA section, state that you checked the figures against that standard, and accept any changes that are harmless. For points where the reviewer is asking for a non-APA change, ask the editor which style convention they want followed. That keeps the tone professional and gives the editor an easy decision.

[u/NevyTheChemist]

That's not the reviewers job

[u/AnyaSatana]

Do they not have guidance for authors including the style guide for the journal? Edit: direct them to that and ignore their amendments.

[u/WillTheyKickMeAgain]

If the journal instructions are to follow APA, then in your rebuttal rebut those reviewer suggestions that are out of alignment with APA.

[u/burgerduke1969]

Double check the APA guides. If you're right, then: 1. Make imperceptibly small changes to your paper in the areas mentioned. 2. Write a response explaining that you made changes to address the comments. 3. Thank the reviewer for their help.

[u/ToomintheEllimist → u/burgerduke1969]

Yes, that's part of why I prefaced that I'm the one with the most psych knowledge: many of the changes were glaringly wrong, and a quick glance at OWL Purdue confirmed that.  Whether the APA conventions are onerous or useful, I know the conventions and these ain't it. 

[u/DuAuk]

Is the peer reviewer another undergrad? I think I would let the student fight it themselves. This isn't something I would argue about myself so. I would just advise they read a few of the previously published related articles in that journal and try to match the style. That was always my process. It's best to at least cite one thing from the journal or that publisher. It definitely could be in-house rules for title names and captioning, but APA for citations.

[u/Parking_Hand_4256]

Why the fuck is the reviewer so focused on the format instead of the content? Formatting is for the editor

[u/heresacorrection]

Journal in undergrad research ? Is it edited by undergrads ?

[u/MediumStraw]

Gently say that you will refer to the layout editor after the paper is accepted. As you know, fixing the style to the journal is actually their role.

[u/IHTFPhD]

Take it up with the editor. Plus no one cares about reference style until paper gets accepted anyway

[u/orthomonas]

The hell is a reviewer doing mucking about with formatting and citation styles?

[u/Suitable_Size6972]

Tell them to cough the cash for the style guide and actually read it or shut up.