Q: Will my manuscript be rejected if I found some grammatical errors after resubmission, especially as one reviewer had mentioned that the overall writing needs to be improved?
After submitting for a major revision, I found some grammatical errors in the manuscript. However, I had addressed all comments very nicely. I wanted to know whether these grammatical errors will lead to a rejection, as one reviewer mentioned that the overall writing needs to be improved. I have tried to improve the writing, but there were still some errors. Will I get a chance to correct in the next/minor revision or will they directly reject the manuscript?
We understand this is a follow-up to this question, as it seems to have a couple of additional inputs: that you noticed the errors after resubmission and that one reviewer had mentioned that overall the writing needs to be improved.
To address the first input, as we mentioned earlier, if you noticed the misses after resubmission, that’s fine, and you can simply write to the editor sharing this along with your intention to fix them in the next/final round if they decide on an acceptance. (If so, they will typically say that it’s a conditional/provisional acceptance until you fix the issues.)
The second input could be more critical, especially if this reviewer happens to be Reviewer 2, who is known to be more stringent. However, we don’t wish to make you feel too worried about this possibility, and would recommend taking it step by step. What you need to look at is their comment of improving the writing, for this paper and also for future publications. Through us, you could seek to do this in various ways.
On Editage Insights, we have several resources for researcher support, many of which are about improving scholarly/scientific writing. We have shared a couple below. There are of course many more, and you may find them by searching on the site using the relevant keywords.
- The complete guide to writing a brilliant research paper
- How researchers should work to write the first draft of their manuscript
Before submission, you may also want to consider having your paper edited. The advantage of this is that apart from language and grammar editing, and depending on the service you choose, there may also be a technical review of your paper, thus also allowing you to improve the scientific merit of your paper. You may learn more our editing services here: Editage Editing Services
Finally, you can also look to improve your writing over time. This you can do by upskilling yourself through learning/training courses. Here, you may find our sister brand, R Upskill, very useful (as we shared in the previous response as well). R Upskill offers a comprehensive Master Research Writing program, which aims to steadily enhance your scientific writing capabilities. You may learn more about the program here: Master Research Writing from R Upskill [As before, the courses are available for free for a limited period. So, you may try them out and assess how they can benefit your work.]
For now though, coming back to your query, you should not worry too much about your paper and instead take it one status update at a time. :) All the best again!
This content belongs to the Career Growth Stage