Transcript Slide 1

Addressing a Referee Report
Coloquio de Investigación - CICIA
Dr. Javier Rodríguez, EGAE
Dra. Marisela Santiago, Departamento de
Contabilidad
22 de abril de 2009
Before receiving an Editor and
Referee Report:
• Submit the manuscript following the
guidelines of the selected journal.
• Review the journal’s acceptance rate and
responding length.
– Cabbell’s Directory
• Acceso directo a través de la página del CICIA:
(http://cicia.uprrp.edu/)
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Cabell’s- Example:
REVIEW INFORMATION:
Type of Review: Blind Review
No. of External Reviewers: 2
No. of In House Reviewers: 0
Acceptance Rate: 21-30%
Time to Review: 2 - 3 Months
Reviewers Comments: Yes
Invited Articles: 0-5%
Fees to Publish: 0.00 US$
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Editor’s instructions on referee
invitation:
*Please note that we have been receiving
many good papers and our acceptance
standards have been therefore high.
Currently, we can accept 10-15 percent of
the papers submitted. Please consider
this in drafting your report and
recommendation*.
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Avoid this!:
Estimada profesora Santiago:
Como puede ver en el mail que le adjunto, nosotros le
contestamos en el mes de abril al mail registrado en
ese momento. Como el artículo no fue aceptado,
usted podría enviarlo a otra publicación, o podría
también modificarlo y reenviarlo para nuestra
consideración. Le agradezco mucho su colaboración
con la revista, Elvira Salgado Editora
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Response from the Editor and Referee Report
• Read it twice.
• Expect to be offended.
• Do not take it personal.
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Rejection
• Do not take it personal!
• You might get your paper rejected even after
several rounds.
• Give the paper, and you, a break.
• Share it.
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Rejection continue
• Take their comments seriously and use them
to make the paper stronger.
• Do not send the paper to another journal too
quickly.
• Have a colleague read it.
• Submit the paper to a different journal. As
they say…every paper has a home (journal).
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Example Major R&R:
Dear Dr. Santiago:
I have now received the Associate Editor's and three
referees' reports on the above paper and I attach
these comments for your perusal. As you can see the
referees see merit in your ideas, but they collectively
have considerable reservations with the paper. I have
personally read your paper as well and I generally
agree with their comments. In sum, I would like to
invite you to do a major revision of this paper.
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Example Major R&R (continue):
• Associate Editor: 1
AE Comments to Author:
Despite these strengths, there is considerable room for
improvement. My major concerns are as follows: (1) As all of
the reviewers indicate, the writing needs to be improved
considerably; (2) the theory development is quite weak and not
very compelling; (3) the validity of the dependent variable is in
question; (4) the appropriateness of GLS regression for panel
data is in question; and (5) the discussion of the theoretical and
practical implications of the study is quite limited or nonexistent.
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Example Major R&R (continue):
• Reviewer: 2
Comments to the Author
This is an interesting and well-written paper which makes a
useful contribution to the area of corporate governance in
Latin American markets (a surprisingly neglected area of
research). … For these reasons I recommend acceptance
subject to the following observations and required expansion
of existing points.
1. There are many spelling errors and problems with sentence
construction throughout, including in the data analysis part of
the paper…
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Example Major R&R (continue):
• Reviewer: 3
Comments to the Author
This paper addresses an important governance issue in
emerging economies. The conflict of interests between
controlling shareholders and minority shareholders in
emerging economies has continuously been a subject of
research interests. This paper is well written and could
potentially add to the body of knowledge about the
governance practices in Latin America.
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Another Example R&R:
Dr. Santiago-Castro,
• We have received a careful report on your paper and
have read the manuscript ourselves. We agree with
the referee that your paper has an opportunity to be
an excellent addition to the Special Issue. We are
therefore offering you the opportunity to revise and
resubmit the paper. In your revision, please be sure to
refocus your discussion to highlight the actual
contributions of your paper and please be sure to site
the appropriate literature. We believe that there is a
path to publication if you carefully address the
referee's concerns.
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Revise and Resubmit (R&R)
• If you receive a R&R you should be very
thankful.
• R&R are valuable and as such should be
treated seriously.
• Try to respond within 30 days or so.
• Remember, the editor or an associate editor
can act as an additional referee.
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R&R continue
• Try to find out who your referee is.
• Determine what are you going to address and
what to refute.
• Most likely the referee report will be a list of
items. Be sure to go through the list very
carefully.
• You will have to send a detailed report with
your reaction to each point the referee made.
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R&R continue
• Cite page numbers in your response to each
point.
• You may mention major changes you made to
the paper, as a response to a specific referee.
• Do not argue with the referee.
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Answering the referee report
• I am a little concerned about the absence of Treasury
bonds. Are these included in the bond sample? The
authors discuss that they differentiate between high and
low quality and by maturity, but do not mention whether
Treasury bonds are included in the sample.
I added an aggregate Treasury bond index to the model.
Thanks to this suggestion the fit of the stock and bond
extended model is better than in the previous version of the
paper. In this revised version of the paper I give credit to the
reviewer for this suggestion.
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Answering the referee report continue
Besides the TM procedure, I would like the authors to also look at
the Henrikkson and Merton (1981) procedure, as it is more recent.
Although I agree that Henrikkson and Merton (1981) is more recent
and may be worth while to take a look at its formulation, I decided
to keep the original idea of the paper and follow Comer (2006) for
several reasons: 1. Comer (2006) is the only paper that specifically
looks at the timing ability of hybrid mutual funds, so it becomes
fairly natural for me to apply his methodology to the global version
of these funds. 2. To the best of my knowledge there is no multifactor version of Henrikkson and Merton. 3. Finally, since I include
up to 7 indexes in the stock and bond extended timing models,
parsimony becomes an important issue and the original Treynor
and Mazuy model and the multi-factor extensions in Comer allow
for this.
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Answering the referee report:
• El documento no está actualizado en sus referencias … Los
estudios recientes compilados por Lopez-de-Silanes & Chong
(2007) sobre protección al inversionista en América Latina es
un punto de partida. También los papers de Bernard Black
(2005, 2007) sobre Corea son bastante ilustrativos.
• Respuesta:
– Se revisaron los estudios compilados por Lopez-de-Silanes & Chong
(2007) sobre protección al inversionista en América Latina y otros.
Contrario a nuestro estudio, los estudios compilados por Lopez-deSilanes & Chong utilizan un cuestionario que consiste de 71 preguntas,
62 de las cuales son de si o no. Lamentablemente, esto hace difícil la
comparación de los resultados por que no hay una relación directa
entre las variables utilizadas ni entre la manera de computarlas o
medirlas.
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Answering the referee report:
• El periodo de la muestra. … Sugiero que por lo menos se
actualicen las mediciones de los indicadores de propiedad y
juntas directivas pare el año 2005 o 2006.
• Respuesta:
– Dada la metodología del artículo este tipo de situación es común. Por
ejemplo, recientemente el Journal of Corporate Finance publicó dos
artículos (Bhagat y Bolton (2008) y Guest (2008)) que utilizan datos del
2002. Actualizar los datos de nuestra muestra tomaría un tiempo
considerable ya que implica recolectar datos manualmente. Por ende,
los resultados presentados siempre van a tener un rezago de varios
años.
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Answering the referee report:
(2nd. Round)
•
La sugerencia de actualizar la base de datos y tener estas mediciones de características
de las juntas directivas en un año como el 2005, donde las reformas a las leyes que
regulan los emisores de valores y captación de inversiones ya están implementadas,
hubiera dado mayores elementos analíticos sobre la dirección de las reformas y su
efecto en la estructura de los directorios y por lo tanto en el status quo del gobierno
corporativo en esta muestra importante de corporaciones en América Latina
•
Es evidente un problema de sesgo de selección en la muestra y la justificación ofrecida
por el autor no es suficiente. El que exista relativamente poca investigación respecto al
gobierno corporativo en América Latina no justifica excluir países de la región y obviar
criterios de selección de la muestra y periodo de análisis.
•
ES conveniente señalar las limitaciones y hacerlo de una manera propositiva en el que
se señale qué tipo de investigación hace falta en el campo.
• A pesar de lo anterior se entiende las razones expuestas por los
autores de no actualizar la base de datos.
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Answering a R&R
• When you re-submit your paper you need to
send three documents:
1. Letter to the editor.
2. Your response to the referee.
3. The new version of your paper.
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Answering a R&R continue
• In the letter to the editor, do not forget to thank the editor for
giving you the opportunity to R&R your paper.
Dear Professor Kearney,
Thank you for this opportunity to resubmit our revised manuscript, "An
Empirical Analysis of Mexican and US Closed-End Mutual Fund IPOs"
(RIBAF-D-07-00032). We appreciate the time and effort both the referee
and you have extended on our behalf to improve the paper. We feel that
this revised version is significantly improved as a result of the review
process. Along with the revised paper, please find attached our reviewer
letter. As requested, we have outlined each change we have made to the
paper point by point.
We hope that our revised paper is now acceptable for publication in RIBF.
Should you have any questions, please contact me directly.
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Answering a R&R continue
• In you response to the referee, start and end
by thanking him.
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for reviewing my paper, “Market Timing: a Global
Endeavor.” I feel the paper has been significantly improved by
incorporating your suggestions. Below, I address each of your
concerns in turn.
……….
Once again, thank you for your careful review. I hope I have
been able to sufficiently address your concerns and
incorporate your suggestions.
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