How to deal with these so called "Minor revisions"?

Question

Update: Mars 29 Thank you everyone for your time and efforts to help me with the revision. The article has been resubmitted yesterday and accepted this morning. Without your help, I don't think I can do this. Except your suggestions for this revision, the more important thing I've learned from your comments is the altitude and methods of research， which points out the correct direction and helps me get rid of some misunderstand of research. Thank you everyone again. It's a excellent experience of discussing with you here and I expect more communications in the future.

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I've received the editor's reponse for the second revision. He marked "minor revision" in the online system of submission. But his review is so confusing.

Reviewers/Editor comments: As the reviewer kindly points out the discussion is very speculative. In view of this, the outcome of this manuscript is still in doubt and a final decision will be taken upon submission of your revisions.

Reviewer #1: The authors have responded to my comments. The article has some value but its discussion is still somewhat heavy on speculation and somewhat light on hard analysis. Leading the authors further toward a stronger analysis falls beyond the scope of the review and so it falls to the editor to decide whether that value is sufficient to warrant publication in [journal].

In fact, if I revise the manuscript according to their demand to eliminate the "speculations", I have to delete and simply a lot of the discussions. This is a real "major revisions" indeed. So now I am so confused for this so-called "minor revisions". I'd like to ask your help and advice, thank you!

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Answer 1

Both the reviewer and editor are very polite and guarded in their answers. Reviewer #1 basically says that the analysis section of the paper is too light. OP seems to accept that in the comments. "if I simply these discussions (!), it will be revised a lot." Reviewer 1 says the analysis needs to be beefed up, but he is not going to do it. ("Leading the authors further toward a stronger analysis falls beyond the scope of the review...")

Reading between the lines of @Enze Ma's comment, I think I can see the potential problem: The author uses macroscale experiments ---it would help to know a bit about the area in order to understand what that means --- but uses microscale theories to explain these results. This is always going to be a problem and needs to be addressed honestly and directly. What is it about the macroscale results in the paper that make them different from previous work? Are the microscale theories, in fact, able to shed new light on the macroscale resuls? If not, what is the contribution of the paper to existing literature?

This final question is, of course, the most important and should be addressed first. There should be no waffling about the contribution. "I think my paper may extend the field ... " is not going to cut it. "My paper extends the field in these ways:..." is much more positive, stronger, less speculative, and is likely what reviewer #1 is looking for.

Answer 2

In my experience, there are three big differences between a major revision and a minor one:

1. The major usually has more extensive edits requested, which will take more time.
2. A major revision goes back to reviewers, while the minor revision goes to the (associate) editor for a decision.
3. The vast majority of minor revisions are ultimately accepted for publication, while many more major revisions are later found unacceptable and rejected.

Another possible factor is that some publications may only allow one major revision in the review process. Here, it sounds almost like they want a major revision (as @Enze MA said) in terms of the extent of the changes, but it won't go back to the reviewer who basically punted and asked the journal to decide whether to accept as is.

So given this, my own reaction would be to try and satisfy the editor that I'm doing my best to follow the reviews, without the drastic rewrite to remove all the speculative content. After all, it's a minor revision. Would it work to somehow make it clearer in the article that the authors recognize some of the discussion is more speculative, for example?

Answer 3

I just had something similar to this happen with a high-impact journal with an awesomely useful review process. The majorness of corrections is not about the amount of text changed, it's about how significant to the main outcome -- and how difficult to execute -- the changes are. What I (and it sounds like you) had to do was to recognise which of my claims in the discussion were well-supported, and which were not, and just delete what was not, or possibly replace it with smaller, better substantiated claims.

This is a sensible requirement by a good editor. Science isn't benefited if great experiments carry forwards unwarranted speculation to readers, but we also don't want great experiments thrown out because the authors who did them overestimated their value or significance in some way.

Congratulations on your publication, and I advise that you just comment out the stuff you have to delete, or better yet put it in a file as the start of your next paper, and figure out how to really support those claims :-)

Answer 4

The distinction between minor and major revisions is subjective and it may be that the editor believes that this may be an easy fix, though the comments made to you are confusing for you (as they may be to anyone).

Without having your paper to review and not knowing about the topic of the manuscript, my initial thought is that you may be able to move your discussion section from "speculative" to "analytical" by grounding your findings more in the existing research. If you can relate your findings more to the existing body of research and site other stories, it seems that this would make your discussion of the findings less "speculative." Good luck! Hope this helps.