Feedback is your Friend

Our goal when we write up our science is not to document what we have done, but to communicate it. And, as Joshua Schimel says in Writing Science, “It is the author’s job to make the reader’s job easy.” In other words, whether or not we are successful in our scientific writing depends on whether or not our audience is able to - without any undo hardship - understand our message. So, how can we know if we are accomplishing this? How can we know if our audience is deriving the correct meaning from our writing? How can we know if they are achieving this relatively quickly and painlessly?

We can ask them!

We can (and should!) ask our peers and our colleagues to read our writing and give us feedback. Soliciting feedback on your scientific writing should be an integral part of your writing process. You should also strive to give feedback often, and to a variety of people on a variety of different topics. I would argue that receiving and giving writing feedback are the two best ways to improve our scientific writing - a particular text, but also our skillset in general.

When you get feedback on your writing, you should always consider it carefully and critically. If somebody has taken the time to give you feedback, make sure that you go through it all and carefully consider ever part of it. But, do not uncritically accept all feedback. Ultimately, you are the author of the text, and as long as your name is on it, you get to decide what feedback you accept and what you reject.

When and Who?

Let’s say that the process of writing a paper can generally be broken into 4 major stages (of course, there are many ways to break this down, but bear with me on the 4-stages theory). Once you have your major results and drafts of the most important figures, then you are….

1. Planning - You’re outlining the paper, deciding on the framing, drafting an abstract, catching up on background lit reading, etc etc.

2. Drafting - You’re writing it all out, getting everything down on the page.

3. Revising - You’re iterating through your draft, editing, improving, clarifying, etc, as you go, as well as soliciting & implementing feedback from others.

4. Completing - You’re finalizing the paper, double checking citations, polishing the formatting, and submitting.

You can (and should) solicit inputs from others at any and every stage of the process. Supervisors and co-authors especially should be involved in Planning, Revising, and Completing.

That said, Stage 3: Revising is when you can get the most feedback - since by then you have a draft, others can actually critically evaluate it and give you their impressions and suggestions about your paper. In this stage, you reach out to somebody, asking for them to review what you have written and to critique how you have written it. You then implement that feedback as best as you can and as much as you want, and then likely ask somebody else, and so on and so forth.

Whom you ask for feedback will depend on where you are at in this stage and what kind of feedback you want/need. Ideally you will get feedback from a mix of Insiders (at the very least, all co-authors must weigh in!) and Outsiders…

Insiders: When you want feedback that generally falls under the question of “Is this correct?”, it is usually better to get feedback from people who are familiar with your study. This includes your supervisor, coauthors, and other people who have a relatively in-depth knowledge about your project and study system. People who are more familiar with, or even involved in, your research are often better at, for example, evaluating whether or not you have framed your paper in such a way that captures the true importance of your study, or helping you to correctly explain and appropriately justify specific aspects of your study design.

Outsiders: When you want feedback that generally falls under the question of “Is this clear?”, it’s usually good to get feedback from somebody (or a few people) who is less familiar with your research (but who does have a general grasp of the scientific field). This may include people in your lab, department, or institute who work in the same field but not on the same project/system as you. People who aren’t so familiar with your specific research are often better at, for example, highlighting gaps in info & explanations, or pointing out passages that are confusing or overly-‘jargony.’

Depth of Feedback

There are essentially 3 ‘depths’ at which you can get/give feedback. Generally speaking, the deeper the feedback the better! However, that said, giving deep feedback can be very time consuming, and sometimes it is more beneficial to an author for the editor to give shallow feedback on a longer text (e.g., the entire paper), rather than deeper feedback on a shorter text (e.g., only the introduction). So, it’s important to find a balance.

Shallow: Where is there a problem? You are marking sections, paragraphs, and/or sentences where the writing is problematic. Where is something unclear or incorrect? Where do you get lost or confused? Where does it feel awkward and foggy in your brain? This feedback could take the form of comments such as “I don’t really understand what you are saying here.” or “I’m not able to follow this line of argument.” or, more generally, “I’m not sure if I understand the motivations behind your study.”

Middle: What is the problem? You are attempting to diagnose what the actual source of the confusion/issue is. Is it a structural issue or a phrasing issue? Is there a word or idea or transition that is missing? This feedback could take the form of comments such as “I think the problem might be the structure of this sentence.” or, more generally, “Your introduction is lacking info about the knowledge gap that your study aims to fill.”

Deep: How could the problem be fixed? You are attempting to give general and/or specific suggestions that could improve the problematic aspects or parts of a text. You can put comments and/or track-changes directly into the text to show the author how a problem might well be fixed. This feedback could take the form of comments such as “I think you need to flip the order of the clauses in this sentence.” or, more generally, “I think you could add a paragraph here that outlines the knowledge gap that motivated your study - what about this topic do we not know, and why is it important to fill in this blank?” or, edits (track-changes) directly in the document to fix the wording in a sentence.

The depth at which you give feedback will likely vary throughout a text (for some problems, you might be able to give deeper feedback than other problems), and will generally depend a lot on the depth of your knowledge of the topic/research, the stage that the writing is at, and how much time you have.

The depth at which you take feedback will also vary throughout a text - you might not like the deep feedback that somebody gives you (or their deep feedback might even change a passage to be incorrect!) but the shallow aspect of that feedback (that the presence of these edits indicate where there is a problem) is likely very legitimate - so although you may not take the editors suggested changes, you still need to change the problematic section.

Also, it’s important to remember that feedback need not be all about problems with a text! In fact, you can think about positive feedback as having these same levels as well: Shallow positive feedback points out a piece of the text that is particularly effective, Middle positive feedback describes why part of a text is particularly effective, and Deep positive feedback explains how the good aspects of this piece of text could potentially be extrapolated to other, weaker parts of the text. Whenever possible, include positive feedback when you are reviewing a text - this can really help an author to understand what makes their writing effective.

When asking for feedback

Whenever possible, it’s really important to reach out early when you want, or know that you will want, feedback. If you are writing towards a future deadline, assume that you will need feedback from others leading up that deadline, and schedule this feedback early! Do not wait until your deadline is looming only a week ahead, and you finally have a full and completed draft, to ask somebody to review your work - there is no guarantee (and, depending on the person, frankly a very low chance) that they will have the time to give you thoughtful and helpful feedback within your time window. Instead, anticipate when you’ll be wanting feedback, and schedule this with people ahead of time! Not only does this ensure that the person will have time to give you feedback, but you can also use these planned feedback sessions as informal process-step deadlines for yourself to prevent leaving things to the last minute. (Even if you don’t have as much done as you wanted by the time of the planned feedback sessions, you can still get feedback on whatever you do have finished, which is always better than no feedback at all.) Of course, sometimes an opportunity (e.g., grant call, etc) pops up on your radar really late, and you don’t have time to schedule these things far in advance. Of course, in such a case, it’s still worth asking for feedback - ask multiple people, be upfront about your timeline, and hopefully at least one or two potential editors can make some time for you!

When you ask for (or are asked to give) writing feedback, first discuss the following questions with the author/editor:

What is the timeline for this text? When does the author need it back by, and when & how much time (i.e., how many hours) can the editor work on it?
What is the current status of the text and on what should the reviewer focus? (see below)
Who is the audience for this text? What is the planned destination for this text, and what do they require in a text? (e.g., If it’s a grant proposal, what does the granting agency want to see in the proposal?; If it’s a journal article, what journal(s) is the author considering submitting to, and what are this journal’s Instructions for Authors?; etc)
What, in particular (e.g., a certain idea/concept or a particular section), is the author struggling with or wanting help on?
What is the extent of the editor’s general knowledge about this topic/field of research, and how might that inform the type/depth of feedback they give?

Feedback Foci & Format

Within the Revising stage of writing, there are 2 major, sequential, foci on which you can ask for feedback (again, bear with me as I break a complex and nebulous process down into discrete, somewhat arbitrary, parcels). It’s important to solicit these two types of feedback in the correct order, starting with Content & Structure, and then - once you have that nailed down - moving on to Language & Clarity.¹

1. Content & Structure

Here, the focus of the person giving feedback should be the flow of ideas. They should think about what and where information is presented. They should address broader, macro-level questions, such as:

Is the importance of the study clear?
Is enough background/contextual information given in the intro and discussion?
Are the results and implications of the study clear?
Is anything missing? Does anything seem superfluous/unnecessary?
Do the paragraphs and sections follow a logical, coherent order?
Does each paragraph/section have a clear function? Is the paragraph-breaking appropriate?
Is there enough detail given in the methods and results that you can understand how the data were collected and analyzed?
Are topics/foci presented in the same order through all sections of the text?

Of primary importance when asked to give this type of feedback is to not get bogged down in the details. Limit yourself to using comments and to directly discussing your feedback with the author, but try to avoid using track-changes (as this often will shift your mind towards the details). When asked for this type of feedback, I often will print out the paper and work on a hardcopy, as this helps me avoid getting bogged down in language and clarity edits.

2. Language & Clarity

Here, the focus of the person giving feedback should be the flow of the writing. They should think about how information is presented. They should address specific, meso- and micro-level questions, such as:

Where do you get stuck or confused? Where do you lose interest?
How could problem areas be changed to improve readability?
Can the writing be made more concise and less wordy?
Does each sentence have a clear point/purpose?
Does each paragraph have a specific topic and message?
Does each sentence flow nicely from the next?
Are there sufficient and proper citations (especially in the intro and discussion)?
Check for: unnecessary lead-ins, run-on sentences, unclear antecedents, noun-verb accordance, proper punctuation, undefined or unnecessary acronyms, etc

Of primary importance when asked to give this type of feedback is to not attempt to overhaul the paper. Unless you really believe that there is a fatal flaw in the content or structure of this paper, try to avoid making broad, macro-level suggestions. Instead, use comments and track-changes to provide specific feedback. Of course, it’s often also a good idea to discuss your feedback with the author (or at least be available to answer any questions that they may have after going through your feedback.)

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Side note: For many, this goes without saying, but some may need this reminder… If somebody is coming to you for writing feedback and they are in the Revising stage of writing, avoid instead giving them feedback about the actual science itself (e.g., the validity of the methods, the appropriateness of the statistical analysis, etc). As they have already - presumably - been through a long process of discussions, data analysis, and paper planning with their co-authors, and the ship has sailed on the science. If you feel that there are weaknesses in the science itself, give them feedback on how they can address and/or explain these limitations appropriately, or temper their conclusions accordingly - i.e., writing feedback. If you feel that you have spotted a fatal flaw in their science (something that cannot be explained and that fundamentally invalidates their study), then of course you must point this out. But just generally bear in mind that you have been asked to provide writing feedback, not study design & analysis feedback.↩︎