Ok I just got a blind paper reviewed by two examiners; overall, my paper is accepted; the first examiner stated that my paper is very good but I need to clarify certain bits of the paper; the other one went the inverse of that and went overboard with the criticisms and it's as if they want me to redo the whole paper!

Is this normal? Any views why these two extreme views are happening? : /

Hi there!

I wouldn't stress over this- it seems to be really common (even with top profs from what I can gather) and the main thing is the overall outcome. I've had reviews which seem to contradict each other, simply because reviewers are coming at the topic from different places- different backgrounds, training, experience, preferred theories, differing loyalties, familiarity with different literature, varying levels of perfectionism, good versus bad day in the office etc!

I think the best way to deal with it is to attend to as many of the suggestions as you feasibly can, within reason. I always try to make changes to address each point (even if I think it's a bit irrelevant/redundant), unless I really disagree with it, in which case I argue against it in my response to reviewers' comments. There have been a few occasions where I have argued against making particular changes, and this has never gone against me- i.e. my arguments have generally been accepted by the editor and refusing to make a particular change hasn't resulted in any change regarding the acceptance of the paper. Having said that, if I know I am going to refuse to make a particular change, I make sure I address all of the others extra-thoroughly, so it doesn't just look like I'm being really dismissive/arrogant/just plain grumpy!

Reviewers will most likely always have differing feedback- I think I would be more weirded out by two or three lots of identical comments lol! Great it's accepted anyway, well done :)

Best, keenie

Thank you Keenie!

One of the comments the reviewer stated is that I need to change the formatting of the paper; strange though that the formatting doesn't follow what the publisher has said to use : /

Keenie I have another thread about dismissive/arrogant/just plain grumpy kinda topic; hope you could give some input there too! : )