Revise and Resubmit
Peer Review as a Spiritual Practice
A few months ago, I submitted to a journal an article manuscript that was on a topic outside my established areas of specialty. In fact, the essay was quite different from anything I had ever written before, focusing on the interpretation of a long-dead theologian rather than on Catholic social teaching (I’m being intentionally vague here for reasons that should become clear). Still, the topic is something I am passionate about, I felt I had something important to say, and I thought I had the skills to give it a try. In preparing for the essay, I immersed myself in the scholarly literature, dusted off some historical manuscripts (okay, I accessed them through Google Books’ amazing digitized manuscript collection), and gradually worked out what I wanted to say.
Then, just recently, I got word back from the editor of the journal: revise and resubmit. The editor attached the two reviewers’ comments for guidance. At first, it felt devastating that something into which I had put so much time and effort, and which I really wanted to see the light of day, had been turned down. I had to remind myself that perhaps it was unrealistic to expect to succeed on the first try when venturing outside my area of expertise. And the more I thought about the two reviewers’ comments, the more encouraged I became.
Both reviewers had acknowledged that the point I was trying to make was insightful and worth sharing. One reviewer even thought the essay was good enough to publish if I clarified some points and made some key distinctions. The other reviewer thought more substantial changes were needed and also suggested that some material should be cut while the core arguments needed to be expanded. And the reviewers were right. I think the essay will be much better once I get a chance to incorporate their suggestions, and I am thankful for that.
Of course, the manuscript process isn’t always this helpful. As the editors of the Journal of Moral Theology and I talked about in our interview a few months ago, the stereotype of “Reviewer #2” as cruel, clueless, or generally unhelpful when they review your manuscript has some basis in reality. Even if the reviewers are generally helpful, they might recommend contradictory revisions or propose that you write the article they would have written instead of the one you are trying to write. As one wit once posted on social media, if you try to please both reviewers, your revised manuscript might end up looking like this:
(I couldn’t find the original poster of this joke, or the original source of the photo, but please don’t attribute it to me! I am shamelessly stealing here.)
The peer review process can sometimes go very badly, but when it works well, which I think is much of the time, it makes our work better. Authors will often thank the anonymous reviewers of their article in a footnote, and while this may be a professional courtesy, it can also express a real sense of gratitude that the essay is better than it would have been and makes a more substantial contribution to the scholarly conversation because of the work of the reviewers.
At its best, peer review reminds us that scholars make up a community. On the one hand, scholarly research can be a solitary process, and we are rightly proud of our scholarly accomplishments, listing them prominently on our CV’s and web sites. And scholarly discourse is by design contentious, more decidedly so in some fields than in others. But the peer review process provides the opportunity for a more experienced scholar to nurture a fledgling author (or an experienced one branching out into a new area, which feels about the same) by giving feedback on what works in an argument and where the writer needs to go back to the drawing board. We also want our arguments to make maximum impact in the scholarly conversation, and peer reviewers let us know when our points aren’t as clear as we thought or when we are overlooking an element of the problem or sources that might enrich our writing.
When looked at with a contemplative spirit, the peer review process can also be a source of personal and spiritual growth. After all, “review and resubmit” is just the scholarly equivalent of the universal experience of “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again,” as Ginger Rogers (and later Nat King Cole) sang long ago. Of course, when reviewers’ comments aren’t helpful, it can be difficult to know how to “start all over again,” and so it might be beneficial to get feedback from a trusted friend or mentor, or even from the editor of the journal where you submitted the manuscript, who, after all, also has to make sense of the reviewers’ remarks and decide how to proceed. When reviewers do provide useful feedback, however, you can develop a strategy for figuring out what comes next. At the risk of being corny, the review process can be a kind of spiritual practice that helps us prepare for the more difficult and substantial problems in life.
As I noted several months ago, since leaving my job as a university professor in connection to the closing of my department, I have been engaged in a job search that is simultaneously a vocational quest, as I have opened myself to the possibility that my career’s future may be significantly different than the past. Right now, I am teaching ESOL classes at the local community college, and I am scheduled to teach some courses at nearby Divine Word College and Seminary in the fall, but I am still searching for a more long-term path.
The job search can be difficult, especially if, like me, you have been in one profession your whole adult life. It’s rare to get feedback after a job interview, and so it’s difficult to know what to do better the next time around. Still, there are resources available online and in print, and friends and mentors may be willing to offer advice. It’s during occasions like these we have to just “revise and resubmit,” and eventually we’ll make our mark.
Do you have any experiences of personal growth from the peer review process? What’s a time in your life when you had to “revise and resubmit”? Share your thoughts in the Comments.
Of Interest…
This story is from June, but it just recently came to my attention. In Germany, four digital avatars performed a church service, including a sermon, prayers, and music, created by the ChatGPT large language model (LLM). The service was attended by over 300 flesh-and-blood people. This project was the work of the German theologian Jonas Simmerlein, and took place at the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag, a biennial convention of Protestants that this year took place in the Bavarian towns of Nuremberg and Fuerth. Catholic theologians like Jana Bennett, Daniella Zsupan-Jerome, and Katherine Schmidt have done important work considering the possibilities and limits of the Church inhabiting “digital” or “virtual” spaces. Although an AI-generated worship service may not be something the Catholic Church wants or needs, it might be worth exploring the possibilities of using AI like ChatGPT to assist in writing homilies. It couldn’t be worse than what we’ve got now, right?
A couple of weeks ago, Oppenheimer was released in movie theaters. The movie is a biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War. The movie’s release has spurred a debate on social media about the morality of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, mostly rehashing worn out arguments that pop up from time to time. In 1944, the American Catholic moral theologian John C. Ford wrote an article, published in Theological Studies, arguing against the use of “obliteration bombing,” or the indiscriminate bombing of civilian population centers. Although Ford’s argument was focused on conventional weaponry, the argument could easily be applied to nuclear weapons. Indeed, Ford’s essay arguably laid the foundation for later Catholic thinking about nuclear weapons. In the National Catholic Reporter, Thomas C. Fox makes the case that the film Oppenheimer provides an opportunity to re-open the conversation about U.S. nuclear weapons, a conversation which has mostly been silent since the end of the Cold War. If the movie helps Americans re-evaluate our dependence on nuclear weaponry for our security, it will be, as Fox concludes, something of a miracle.
Coming Soon…
Later this week, I’m going to take the next leg of my “world tour” in preparation for the Synod of Synodality and offer some reflections on the continental document from the Middle East. I’ve learned I need to pace myself a bit, so I will introduce the Synod participants from the Middle East by the end of next week.
In between, early next week, I hope to publish my interview with Dr. Hosffman Ospino, the Chair of the Department of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry. I interviewed him last week, and we talked about how the Church can reach out to Latino/a youth, the relationship between sociological research and theology, and the state of Hispanic theology in the United States, among other things.
And of course, later this week I will also announce the winners of the drawing for prizes for new paid subscribers!
I think I can count on two fingers the number of times that peer review has been positive. I have found it to be almost universally territorial, and not very collegial. I think ideally, it could be formative in the way as you described, but I’ve almost never seen it actually practiced that way.