Getting more than nits from reviews

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>]

On the cover page or e-mail, state your expectations in clear language 
and big letters:

________________________________________________________________________

"Thanks for taking part in this technical review. It is intended to 
catch any technical problems in <name of pub>. I would like you, as a 
technical expert, to highlight any technical material that appears 
wrong, incomplete, misleading or confusing. You can either add your 
detailed comments to the draft, or simply flag the problem and I'll 
follow up with you in person.

As this is an early draft you may find problems such as typos and 
punctuation errors. Don't worry about looking for these now. There will 
be a separate round of copyediting reviews later. (Let me know if you'd 
like to be included in that group of reviewers also)."
________________________________________________________________________


For the real recalcitrants, reinforce the message in person (if you hand 
over a paper copy) or by phone (if you e-mailed the draft). "Thanks for 
doing this... Don't worry about typos... I have other reviewers who can 
concentrate on those later... You're the only person who can review the 
technical content so I need you to focus on that..."

Good luck

Stuart


Susan Hogarth said:
 > I recently sent a rough draft around to a bunch of SMEs looking for
 > substantive input, and they wasted their precious (and expensive)
 > time copyediting it, while making no substantive contributions.
 > I didn't know whether to be more humiliated or aggravated.
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