Submit Revised Manuscript with tracked changes?

[Santommaso]

I'm about to resubmit my revised manuscript back to a journal after receiving helpful comments from 2 reviewers. One reviewer said "accept" and the other said "accept with changes" with 6 dense pages of suggestions and objections. Should I resubmit my manuscript with the "tracked changes" function on so the editor and concerned reviewer can see all the changes I made?

[ab_grp]

I'm about to resubmit my revised manuscript back to a journal after receiving helpful comments from 2 reviewers. One reviewer said "accept" and the other said "accept with changes" with 6 dense pages of suggestions and objections. Should I resubmit my manuscript with the "tracked changes" function on so the editor and concerned reviewer can see all the changes I made?

If there are no instructions available, my preference would be for the resubmission to include tracked changes, given that the individual viewing the document can opt to view no markup or changes only from specific people, etc.  If you can submit a clean copy too, great (this is allowed in some systems).  Submitting only a clean copy seems to require more work for reviewers or editors interested in specific revisions.  They could compare the new doc against the previous one in Word, but the tracked changes option seems to make more sense to me.  Including a response to reviewers is also usually warranted, especially if the reviewer comments were not in-line (were in a separate document from your manuscript).  YMMV, of course.

[Katrina Gulliver]

Tracking changes can make a clunky formatting situation. What I have done is put added sections in blue rather than black, so they can see.

[Sun_Worshiper]

The norm in my field is to turn in the paper with no track changes, along with a detailed letter explaining all of the changes you've made.  This is what I typically do as an author (I have put all changes in red font once or twice, on the editor's request), and I've been successful converting R&Rs.  I've also never seen a paper with track changes as a reviewer on the second round.

[polly_mer]

The norm in my field is to turn in the paper with no track changes, along with a detailed letter explaining all of the changes you've made. 

This is the norm in my fields as well.  As a reviewer, I am always pointed to a system in which I download a PDF.  There is never an option to turn on/off track changes.

I really, really, really don't want to deal with a messy track changes document, even when I'm the one who asked for changes.  I want a letter explaining what you did and a clean copy so I can see whether was came back is actually better or is bad in a new way. 

I've seen more than one R&R that was actually worse because the authors didn't understand why specific changes were suggested.  Fighting through a track changes document doesn't help when the changes were ones of logic instead of typos and minor rephrasing.

[ab_grp]

The norm in my field is to turn in the paper with no track changes, along with a detailed letter explaining all of the changes you've made. 

This is the norm in my fields as well.  As a reviewer, I am always pointed to a system in which I download a PDF.  There is never an option to turn on/off track changes.

This is a good point.  I was referring to a system that allows for downloading or otherwise obtaining original documents, not just the PDF version.  I also agree that tracked changes can help identify specific line edits (which I do think can be more than just editorial and are sometimes important to be able to spot easily) but that more structural or larger logical changes are better highlighted through the response to reviewers.

[pigou]

Definitely no track changes, but do include a lengthy response letter where you thank them for their comments and reply in detail.

6 pages from one reviewer is way more comments than I'd get in my field, but even so, it helps to just keep their comments as-is, italicize them in your response, and respond to each point in turn. I usually get 3-4 pages and the reply runs around 10 pages.

Instead of saying "this is now changed," say a few words about how it has changed, then copy-paste the part from the manuscript that you have revised in response if it's relatively brief (e.g. a paragraph) -- otherwise, say something like: "This is now addressed in the new subsection on Page 5."

Part of your task is to show that you have thought about their comments and how your revisions directly address them. This is also why track changes doesn't work: that requires the reviewer to go look through the paper and try and figure out whether and how you have responded to them. Your job is to make this really easy for the reviewer, so they can feel good about recommending in favor of publishing.

Also helps to number their points if they haven't done it already. Then you can refer to other comments (e.g. "I address this further in my response to reviewer 2's comment #6"). Importantly, if there's another round of reviews, the reviewer can refer to your comments by number.

[Parasaurolophus]

Tracking changes can make a clunky formatting situation. What I have done is put added sections in blue rather than black, so they can see.

Chime, except that I put my changes in bold.

The other slightly-less-clunky-than-track-changes option would be to generate a compared document, with a comparison between the initial submission and the new one.

But I prefer to put things in bold.

[Santommaso]

Thanks, everyone! I appreciate the quick and helpful suggestions here.

[secundem_artem]

Editor here.

Depends on the journal.  My various health related field journals usually ask for track changes.  When I go to download a revised paper, the resultant pdf gives me the original as well as the revised with track changes on.

I would not follow anybody's advice here to either have/not have track changes since it's journal specific.  Usually, the revise and resubmit from the editor will provide the necessary advice.  If not, contact the editor.

But 6 pages of revisions?  That's kinda nuts.  If I had a paper with that many required changes, I'd reject it.

All that said, your reply to the editor with what you have done/not done and why will be vital for an editorial decision.  I think most editors have dealt with insane reviewers at times and are able to separate needed changes from somebody just messing with your use of semi-colons (it happens).

[zyzzx]

The norm in my field is to give them everything. Submit the manuscript as a clean copy, then the response to the reviews with all the comments and your response to each, and then appended to that a version of the manuscript with tracked changes shown (usually as pdf). A number of journals explicitly ask for this. As a reviewer or editor, seeing the tracked changes can be handy. You get an easy overview of how much revising they've actually done, which sections haven't changed at all, so perhaps don't need such close re-evaluation, and so on. It takes very little effort for the authors to provide (you can always use the compare document thing if you didn't track changes while revising), so why not. But again, this is folded into the response to reviewers, definitely no tracked changes in the manuscript file proper!

[Myword]

  Turning track changes on or off is not so easy--for me on Word. So many times I followed directions that didn't work on my computer. Word is so complicated and computer techs usually don't help with it. Always nitpicky problems--- I sent a final copy of my work to a journal  with the tracking draft and didn't even know it, and it didn't matter. I wish someone would do my typing.