Instructions and Quick-tips for Action Editors

Policy Change Effective May 1, 2024 - Changing the Paper Revision Process

To streamline the paper revision process, TACL is implementing a new procedure focusing on major reviewer comments. Action editors will filter and prioritize these comments, guiding authors to make essential revisions. For original submissions, papers unlikely to meet TACL standards after implementing the mandatory revisions within three months, are rejected outright. For resubmissions, properly addressing mandatory revisions leads to acceptance (a) or minor revisions (b), while failure to do so results in rejection (d). Here is the full rationale:

TACL has always emphasized the balance of high quality review and a fast cycle reviewing process. The aim of this new procedure is to optimize the journal policy on one of the most challenging reviewing phases, the phase of correcting a paper after getting a revise and resubmit (c) recommendation.The goal of the new procedure is to focus the revision process on the most important comments of the reviewers.

The core change we are implementing is asking the action editors to filter the most important comments of the reviewers so that only the changes that are most valuable for the quality of the paper will be made: This important decision of the action editors will be supported by explicit distinctions of the reviewers, between their major and minor comments.

Making this process effective requires coordination between the action editors of the two cycles (original and revised submissions) as discussed below.

In short, in the current process, in the first round of reviews, the reviews can include a large number of comments, and neither the reviewers nor the AE are required to distinguish major from minor issues. This makes the resubmission process unfocused, and the authors often have to address a large variety of comments, some of which are of eclectic nature. In the new process we ask the reviewers to explicitly specify major and minor comments, alongside general comments and questions to the authors, and the AEs are asked to construct the final corresponding lists that form the basis for the revision process. After the paper is resubmitted, the reviewers and AE will judge the new version according to the quality of the changes it makes with respect to the AE lists (particularly, the mandatory revisions and answers to the questions to the authors will be the most important factor in the final decision).

For an original submission - if the reviewers and AEs do not think the paper is likely to be TACL quality given that mandatory revisions that can be taken care of within three months are implemented, they are asked to reject the paper (give it a (d) decision).

For resubmissions - if the mandatory revisions are properly implemented (through revisions to the paper or proper response in the author response letter), the paper should get an (a) or a (b) decision. The main difference between a (b - accepted under minor revision) and a (c - rejected with an encouragement to resubmit within up to 3 months) will remain very similar to the current difference: In a (c) decision the mandatory revisions are evaluated according to their results (e.g., an additional experiment may yield outcomes that contradict the main argument of the paper and then the paper can be rejected), while a paper submitted after a (b) decision will get accepted as long as the required revisions have been implemented (e.g., if the required experiment was implemented, the paper should be accepted regardless of the experiment’s results).

The changes to the review process are as follows:

[Reviewer Task]: For new/original submissions that have not been reviewed before in TACL, reviewers are instructed to structure their free-text review as follows:

General review.
Mandatory Revisions: Must be addressed by the authors in the resubmission (either in the paper itself, or in the response letter or in both).
Optional Revisions: Addressing these revisions will add a bonus in the final decision, helping the AE decide on border-line cases, but they are not required.
[Optional] Questions to the authors: To be addressed in the authors’ response letter, in order to provide more clarity.

[AE Task] Once all reviews are submitted, the AE will write a meta-review, consisting of the same 4 items as the reviewers. Notice the following guidelines:

Concretely, the AEs will construct focused lists of mandatory and optional revisions as well as of questions to the authors. The goal of this stage is not only to provide clarity to the authors, but also, and most importantly, to filter the most important revisions and clarifications required to make the highest quality new version of the paper.
AEs are strongly encouraged to construct this list through a discussion with the reviewers.

For the Action Editor: From this point on, the effective lists are those in the AE’s meta-review and NOT those written by the reviewers in their reviews. That is, the AE lists are those that should be addressed by the authors, as well as by further reviewers and AEs of the paper.

[Author Task] In case of a (c) decision, authors will have to revise the paper according to the above three lists (from the AE’s meta-review):

Mandatory revisions will be addressed either in the body of the paper or in the response letter or in both.
Optional revisions may be addressed in the paper and/or the response letter, and may also be not addressed at all.
Questions to the authors will be addressed in the response letter with corresponding changes in the paper appropriately referenced.

The author response letter will follow a three parts structure, corresponding to the three lists of revisions/questions.

[Reviewer Task] Once the revised paper is submitted in the R&R stage (i.e., in response to a (c ) decision) reviewers will structure their reviews into four parts:

Review of authors' response to the mandatory revisions.
Review of authors' response to optional changes.
Review of authors' response to the questions to the authors.
General review that will focus on recommendations for the final decision, in light of the above evaluations, rather than on raising new issues. Only in rare cases where the implemented changes yield major issues that have to be addressed, this part of the review should discuss these issues and integrate them into the decision recommendation.

[AE Task] In the R&R phase, the AE will write a meta-review, with evaluation of the revised submission with respect to the three lists of revisions and questions, followed by an optional general discussion and a final decision.

If a (b) decision (acceptance under minor revision) is made, the AE will also follow the current process: they will specify the mandatory revisions the authors must implement.

Papers re-submitted after a (b) decision will be reviewed in the same process as the current (i.e. AEs can judge these papers without sending them again to review).

To acknowledge the much more focused nature of the new R&R process, authors will have to resubmit their paper after a (c) decision within 3 months (rather than 3-6 months) from the date of the decision about their original submission. Accordingly, when making a (c) decision AEs are asked to construct a list of mandatory revisions that can be addressed within 3 months. If it seems that the paper requires more extensive revisions, then it should be rejected.
The main difference between (b) and (c) decisions remains the same: In the case of a (c) decision implementing the mandatory changes does not guarantee acceptance (e.g., if authors are asked to run a new experiment, the results of this experiment will affect the acceptance decision of the resubmission), while in the case of a (b) decision implementing the mandatory changes guarantees the acceptance of the paper (e.g., in the case of new experiments, once they are run and properly reported, the paper has to be accepted regardless of their results).

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