Sitting in Your Reader's Chair

Abstract

This article describes to authors what journal reviewers expect of the scholarly publications they review and how authors can anticipate reviewers' sensemaking processes to increase their chances of being understood and making their contribution clear. Authors are urged to (a) clarify their research question and intended contribution early in the paper; (b) guide readers' understanding of literature relevant to the paper; (c) understand readers' perspective and anticipate their questions; (d) be aware of and explain how terms and figures are used; (e) obtain collegial feedback on a paper before submitting it; (f) use editors' and reviewers' feedback to understand how they made sense of the paper; (g) use feedback to improve the paper in revising; and (h) manage the flow of papers from a project to incorporate sensemaking feedback.