thedixitjain Nature Geoscience Revision (ngeo-revision)
When to trigger
- One or more Nature Geoscience referee reports have arrived
- You received an editor decision (revise / reject / reject-with-appeal-option / editorially rejected before review)
- You need to write a point-by-point response to referees
- You are weighing revision versus appeal versus retargeting to a community journal or Communications Earth & Environment
Read the decision before drafting
Nature Portfolio decisions vary; match your strategy to the decision:
| Decision | Strategy |
|---|---|
| Revise (major/minor) | Address every referee point; revise; resubmit with response |
| Reject but resubmission invited | Substantive new work/analysis + a response showing what changed |
| Editorial reject before review (interest) | Decide: strengthen breadth case + appeal, or retarget |
| Reject after review on significance (science sound) | Sharpen the broad-interest/mechanism case, appeal, or retarget |
| Reject on a technical flaw | Fix the science or retarget; do not appeal a valid flaw |
Point-by-point response structure
For each referee comment:
- Quote the comment verbatim (or faithfully paraphrase).
- Respond — agree and act, or disagree with evidence.
- Point to the change — name the exact location ("revised Methods subsection ..., new Fig. 3, new Supplementary Fig. S5, added sentence in para ...").
Conventions that work with Nature Portfolio referees:
- Be courteous and specific; never dismissive, even with a hostile report.
- Quote new manuscript text in the reply so the referee sees the change without hunting.
- Provide a marked-up manuscript alongside a clean version per current Nature practice.
- If you disagree, win on evidence and Earth-system reasoning — add an analysis, a validation, a dataset, or a citation, not tone.
- Respect the container: added material must re-balance via
ngeo-length-management(main text ≤ ~3,000 words; extras to Methods/SI). - Re-check data/code availability and the Reporting Summary if analyses changed.
Worked micro-example: a response entry
Referee: "The circulation inference could reflect the choice of age model rather than a real lead–lag."
Weak reply: "We are confident the age model is not driving the result."
Strong reply: "We agree this must be excluded. We repeated the analysis under three alternative age models (new Supplementary Fig. S5 and Supplementary Table S3): the X ± Y-year lead is preserved in all cases. The Methods 'Age model' subsection now states this, and the main text adds: 'The lead is robust to the choice of age model (Methods; Supplementary Fig. S5).'"
The strong reply concedes the concern, answers with a repeated analysis with uncertainty, and quotes the new sentence with its location — the pattern for every entry.
Resubmission packaging
A Nature Geoscience resubmission is judged as a package:
- Summary of changes — lead with the revision answering the editor's and referees' central concern (usually significance/breadth or grounding).
- One self-contained reply per referee — do not make Referee 2 hunt through answers to Referee 1.
- Container re-certification — added analyses count against the main-text limit and display-item ceiling; state that the revised Article still fits, or what moved to Methods/SI.
- Availability + Reporting Summary refresh — update data/code statements and the Reporting Summary for any new data or code.
- Timing — resubmit complete rather than fast; a revised manuscript typically returns to the same referees.
Handling the interest/significance rejection specifically
This is the signature Nature Geoscience outcome. Options:
- Sharpen, don't inflate. Make the broad-interest case concrete (
ngeo-results-framing,ngeo-cover-letter) — a real cross-field consequence and firmer grounding, not louder adjectives. - Appeal through the Nature Portfolio appeal route only if you have a substantive point the editor/referee missed; appeals are slow and are not for re-arguing taste.
- Retarget to a community journal or Communications Earth & Environment / Nature Communications if the breadth case is genuinely weak — often the faster path to publication (
ngeo-scope-fit).
Checklist
- Every referee point has an explicit response
- Each response names the exact manuscript change location
- New text is quoted in the reply for the referee's convenience
- Disagreements are backed by evidence/Earth-system reasoning, not tone
- A marked-up and a clean manuscript are prepared
- Added material is re-balanced against the word/display-item limits
- Data/code availability and Reporting Summary updated for new analyses
- The main text still stands alone after revision
- If appealing, the appeal raises a substantive missed point, not taste
- If retargeting, the right venue is chosen via ngeo-scope-fit
Anti-patterns
- A defensive or curt tone toward a difficult referee
- Claiming to have addressed a point without actually changing the text
- Adding rebuttal material that pushes the Article over the word/display-item limits
- Appealing a sound technical rejection instead of fixing the science
- Re-arguing breadth with adjectives instead of a concrete consequence and firmer grounding
- Letting revisions make the main text depend on the SI
Output format
【Decision type】revise / resubmit-invited / interest-reject / technical-reject
【Point-by-point】N comments — all addressed with locations? yes / list gaps
【Tone】courteous + evidence-based? yes / fix
【Container re-balanced after additions】yes / fix
【Availability + Reporting Summary refreshed】yes / n/a
【Stands alone after revision】yes / fix
【Path】resubmit / appeal (substantive?) / retarget via ngeo-scope-fit
【Next】ngeo-submission (resubmit) or ngeo-scope-fit (retarget)
Decision categories, appeal procedures, and markup expectations are durable in spirit; verify the current process on the official Nature Geoscience / Nature Portfolio author pages (Checked: 2026-07-16).
Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → Nature-Geoscience-Skills/skills/ngeo-revision/SKILL.md