After long summer break (but I was doing some research) I ahve come back to a paper which my head of department has reviewed for me and I need to make some changes. Don't have a porblme with that at all - some of his suggestions are really good.

Problme is that even having taken out chunks which are superfluous, the paper is nearly 6,000 words long already and needs probably another 1,000 words adding in (to cover off what he says is a key contribution which I have really only superficially covered). I have just checked the journal guidelines and they want papers of 2-5,000 words. So what do I do?

Carry on and then try to edit around 2,000 words out, not bother adding bits, carry on and then try to split into two papers, find another journal?

Hey! It might be worth emailing the editor to seeif they would consider reviewing a longer paper. I had the same problem recently- I cut out as much as I could but still had 1500 words too many and I emailed the editor and he said he would be quite happy to consider a paper of that length, although the reviewers might ask me to shorten it. Otherwise, if you really can't shorten it any further then I would just find another journal. I think it gets to the point where if you keep taking chunks out, eventually you are compromising on the quality of the paper and it would be better to keep it longer and find a different journal. Good luck! KB

I have exactly this same problem. My sup doesn't seem to understand the words 'word count' - she keeps on saying "oh you need more quotes here" etc. but its already WAY too long!

I would say carry on,finish it, then edit it. If you can't get more out of it, then perhaps email the journal, sometimes they make exceptions. If they don't want to, then find another journal :-)