Kyle Fletcher: Hello, and welcome to the second episode of lessons from rejections. Today we're joined by Travis Bradley, a professor of Spanish, who has been at UC Davis since 2001. Welcome, Travis, would you like to start off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Travis Bradley: I think it's important to have some sort of life work balance. So, what I do in my free time is, I'm an amateur musician. I play a range of instruments. I've been playing electric bass guitar for a jazz trio that I'm a part of.
KF: Thanks, Travis. Good to meet you. You mentioned I'd be happy to share some memorable stories of peer review and manuscript rejection. What would you like to tell us?
TB: Probably my most memorable example is earlier on the tenure track. A manuscript that I had submitted, was an outgrowth, an extension of a topic that I had worked on in my dissertation a few years prior. This was really my first real experience with coming into contact with anonymous reviewer feedback from this particular journal. To that point, I had really seen this type of insider view, let's say. So, it was a little shocking, you know, to see some of the types of negative feedback that you can get in a sort of anonymous peer review format. This one particular set of anonymous reviewer comments, I found them very helpful, but also at the same time, they were very, not overly aggressive, but they could be read in a potentially aggressive manner. But then later on that year at a conference where we regularly see each other, it was a more senior colleague who had come to my talk, and afterwards we were just discussing, you know, and he actually admitted to me that he was the reviewer of this particular article, but it was very helpful. We were able to continue the conversation and ultimately, it made for a much better final product.
KF: That's a great story. Did unmasking the reviewer change your perception of the review?
TB: I would have to say that it did. You know if it's anonymous and you're just reading comments in a document, it's really easy to lose that personal touch. And I think reviewers sometimes forget that there is an author, the person who submitted the manuscript on the other side on the receiving end of this criticism, and sometimes they forget to be a little diplomatic in the way that they couch their language. That anonymous aspect can make the communication you know, more prone to misinterpretation.
KF: How do you react to negative feedback?
TB: Well, I've noticed over the years, that I tend to have two reactions, two parts of my response. One is the hurt or the pain that the ego suffers. So it's, you know, everyone has an ego or will develop at some point an ego and any sort of criticism to that, on some personal human level is kind of an affront; that part of me wants to wants to interpret it like that. But then, the second part that I give more weight to is the knowledge and the recognition that this negative criticism is necessary for improvement and is ultimately helpful and should not be ignored and at least responded to if not accepted.
KF: Could you expand more on responding to negative feedback and peer review?
TB: When it's the same reviewers asked to review the resubmission, if they've reviewed it the first time and they're getting asked to review it again and have to read it again. They really do expect or want to see their initial changes either addressed or implemented or addressed in some way. And if they don't, well, it's not good.
KF: What advice would you give others with regards to dealing with and responding to negative peer review?
TB: Yes, the approach that I find myself using again and again is the one suggested by a former professor of mine. Read it have your initial reaction, but then set it aside for at least a week, assuming you're not under some pressing deadline. Hopefully a week will have been a long enough time that you can then come back to the same exact print, the same exact words, reread them in a more calm, a more objective perspective, analyzing and picking apart the criticisms point by point without the ego getting in the way without the initial reaction.
KF: Do you believe your feelings and reactions to negative peer review have changed over time?
TB: Definitely. A lot of my early experiences in dealing with rejection and criticism on manuscripts or works that I presented at conferences. A lot of that was I remember being internalized you know, feeding into the imposter syndrome that I, looking back now realize that I was experiencing in graduate school. Going through the peer review process seems to be a perfect trigger, or an enabler for imposter syndrome. I mean, setting yourself up, you're at your most vulnerable to get anonymous, negative, poorly worded feedback. I remember thinking in my early experiences with such feedback, "oh yeah, this is confirming what I knew all along that I am indeed an imposter and I don't know what I'm talking about". But over time you do develop the sense that, "no, you're not an imposter". You're putting forth your best faith efforts, other people reacted to it, and now you can use that to improve it. It took a while to make that change personally.
KF: What do you observe as being some of the outcomes of the change you refer to?
TB: Part of that was realizing if there's something a reviewer doesn't like about my manuscript doesn't mean necessarily that the idea is flawed or bad or that particular theory, or hypothesis, or analysis of a data set that I'm putting forth is somehow flawed or incorrect. It could mean that I have done a poor job of communicating something I wasn't aware of as the author of the manuscript.
KF: That's a great point that you've raised about communication and perhaps having to take a step back from your work to be able to interpret it? Do you have any more comments?
TB: Yes, it's so easy to get lost in your own little world of the literature, the studies that you were reading in preparing a particular manuscript. It's so easy to know internally what it is you're trying to say. It's not at all easy or obvious how the reader or the audience will interpret what you attempted to say.
KF: Thanks. That's really good advice. So ultimately, you believe peer review makes your work better?
TB: Ultimately, yes. Whatever format it takes for as negative as they may seem at the time, ultimately the goal is to improve your work and it is a necessary part. I would dare say that most of the publications that I have contributed to my subfield, very few of them have been single author publications, even though they may officially appear as such. Because in every initial footnote, you will find an acknowledgement to at least two or three, maybe four anonymous reviewers in which I thank them for their contributions and their and their criticisms. It really is a collaborative effort. Many ideas that I started out with in my first version of the manuscript ended up being scrapped or morphing considerably into a different state, all because of some crucial insight that a reviewer turned me on to
KF: Throughout your career has been key people who have helped you overcome particularly harsh peer review?
TB: I would say one particular person that stands out in my mind was a professor I had in graduate school, who I work closely with, our perspectives coincided and aligned quite a bit. So, he especially was in a position to understand the type of criticism that I was starting to get, as I was presenting my ideas in conferences in graduate school.
KF: It's great to find that kind of mentorship. Do you have a story you could share with us?
TB: There was a more senior professor in the field that was known for being aggressive in the Q and A's of conferences, and he had previously quote, unquote, "attacked", let's say, my mentor, and then a few years later when I was starting to present my own work, he was lo and behold at some of my talks and starting to aggressively "attack" me as well. So that was yet another memorable case, both of us, my mentor and then myself, a graduate student at the time, commiserating or reacting together to criticism that a more senior colleague had unleashed on both of us independently at separate occasions.
KF: That sounds tough, but it must have been nice to have had a mentor who has gone through similar experiences.
TB: So that was very helpful, not just in terms of solidifying my ideas, but also in terms of how do I respond to people like this? How do I respond to overly aggressive callous reviewers? My point there, I guess, would be trying to find a mentor or even it could just be you know, a peer colleague on the same level with whom you can commiserate, talk about strategies for responding.
KF: On top of the advice that you gave us earlier, do you have any other pieces of advice you think would be useful for early career academics?
TB: The idea of keeping open lines of communication between you and the editor. Finding the right fit between your research, your specific paper and the journal, or the audience, or the conference. That's oftentimes the most important question. One way to deal with that is to establish and maintain an open line of communication between you and the editors. Then you can send them a short abstract and just try to get a sense of whether this would be appropriate as a submission. And then later through the reviewing process, keeping communication open with the reviewer. If you don't understand what a particular anonymous reviewer, the point that he or she is making, that's something that you could clarify with the editor.
KF: Have your past experiences altered, how you review the work of others? If so, in what ways?
TB: I have always tried to start out my feedback with positive. What is the most positive thing I can say about the manuscript that I'm reviewing? And then I always try to couch any sort of criticism, almost kind of like when you're writing an email and, you know, you want to be careful with your language such that it won't be interpreted in a sarcastic way, or such that it won't be interpreted with malicious intent. You know, if I think there's a fatal flaw in the study, then I definitely want to make that known. It would be unethical to let it slide, but also, I think there's a place to be made for making the feedback less harsh, but still getting a point across, especially when reviewing because if it's just written, that's where the miscommunication can happen.
KF: What have you learned from your experiences regarding rejection and professional criticism?
TB: Biggest thing I've learned over the years is not to take anything personal. Even though sometimes it might appear to be personal, or maybe in some cases, it could be personal, you never know! But even then, the most important thing is to still not take it personally. Ultimately, what they're trying to do is to better the theories to better the field. Never think of it as an evaluative, affective judgement on your character, or your capacity or your abilities. That is letting your imposter syndrome take over, because you know, your abilities and capacities change over time. There are still plenty of things in my field that I don't understand that I don't know how to do, but I could easily, you know, move into that area, I could acquire those skill sets, that's malleable.
KF: Do you discuss failures and rejections with colleagues and students?
TB: Yeah, I would say overall, it doesn't happen as probably as much as it should.
KF: How do your students react when you share your experiences with them?
TB: They seem really surprised. They have the idea that wow, you actually got rejected, you know, they just have the idea that all faculty maybe are in some sense, superhuman. They only see the success they don't see all of the rejections; they don't see when an article comes out in journal B, that it was rejected at journal A first, that's all invisible. So that's surprising to them. So, I think it's, it's something that we should talk about more.
KF: And finally, is this something you wish you either knew before starting or learned quicker during your career?
TB: I would say the importance of finding the right audience for your work, whether it's a journal, a conference, and then the second part, the importance of incorporating, or at least responding to review or feedback or complaints. It goes back to the idea that the whole thing is a two-way conversation you and then what the reviewers are going to contribute to it, and they will not be silenced! It pays to acknowledge or implement what they're saying or give an argument against it.
KF: Thank you very much, Travis for sharing these great stories with us.
Professor Travis Bradley obtained his PhD from Pennsylvania State University before joining the University of California, Davis, in 2001. His research interests include phonological theory, Judeo-Spanish linguistics, phonetic and phonological variation in Ibero-Romance and other languages, and historical Romance phonology. Travis has authored many research and conference papers and teaches undergraduate courses and graduate seminars in Spanish and Linguistics. You can read more about his research and teaching on his
UC Davis Staff webpage.