TOOLS & RESOURCES
Practical tools for
your next manuscript.
Use these prompts to prepare a project brief, compare editing scopes and organise reviewer comments. Adapt them to your journal and research team.
1. Reviewer-response planning matrix
Create one row for each reviewer comment. Copy these column headings into your spreadsheet or document.
| Column | What to record |
|---|---|
| Reviewer / comment number | A stable reference for each point |
| Complete comment | The reviewer’s wording, preserved in the working file |
| Action required | Edit, clarification, analysis, author decision or reasoned disagreement |
| Responsible author | The person who can resolve the point |
| Dependency | Missing information, co-author input or new analysis |
| Manuscript location | Section and final page or line reference |
| Draft response | The action taken and explanation to the reviewer |
| Status | Open, awaiting author input, revised or checked |
Read the practical reviewer-response workflow →
2. Prepare a medical-writing brief
- Document and purpose: What are you producing, and who will read it?
- Current stage: Do you have an outline, source material, a complete draft or reviewer comments?
- Scope: Which sections or tasks need support? Identify any analysis separately.
- Length and deadline: Give the approximate word count, submission date and internal review dates.
- Requirements: Name the target journal, reporting checklist or organisation’s style requirements.
- Review arrangements: Identify the scientific decision-maker and how co-author comments will be consolidated.
- Deliverables: Agree tracked and clean files, author queries, response documents and revision rounds as appropriate.
3. Choose the editing depth
| Scope | Main focus | Useful starting material |
|---|---|---|
| Language editing | Grammar, sentence clarity, terminology and consistency | A complete draft with scientific content approved by the authors |
| Structural and scientific editing | Organisation, argument, reporting gaps and consistency with the supplied evidence | Draft, relevant tables and figures, study information and target-journal requirements |
| Reviewer-response support | Comment mapping, revision planning and alignment of response and manuscript | Decision letter, all reviewer reports and the reviewed manuscript version |
These scopes can be combined. New literature searches, statistical analyses and additional drafting are agreed separately.
Discuss the next step
Send a short description through our quote form. Please keep the initial enquiry free of patient information and confidential research material. We will agree a suitable channel for documents.