4 tips for getting feedback that elevates your work

Good feedback is invaluable, but not always easy to find. Miscommunications and busy work schedules can lead to vague remarks or irrelevant responses, causing unnecessary confusion. This post describes 4 tips to increase the chance of getting a useful evaluation of your latest manuscript.

After weeks of writer’s block you’ve painstakingly finished that first draft. Now it’s out there, getting criticised. You know it’s not good; you still need to add a paragraph on X, and you’re stuck on some tricky assumptions around Y.

Hopefully your supervisor can bring some clarity. But after five weeks of waiting… Nothing.

All you got are two measly sentences: “Looks ok, but it lacks a paragraph on X. You should also look more into the assumptions you make about Y.” No shit, Sherlock! You want to go yell, but wisely decide to go for to a disgruntled coffee break with your supportive co-worker instead.

Why you don’t get the feedback you need

The right feedback is an effective, useful evaluation of your (written) work. It tells you what is wrong and what is right, and helps you move forward. It can be tough to receive – Anaise Irvine, a graduate research coordinater at the Auckland University of Technology, accurately describes it as an ‘emotional journey’ – but should be constructive and help to improve your work.

It’s frustrating when feedback doesn’t help you move forward. Unfortunately, the people who give feedback – supervisors, co-authors, peer reviewers*, and others – are not mind readers. It can hard for them to know what’s most needed when it’s not clearly requested. Add to this different communications styles, lack of proper training, and stressful work environments and you have a recipe for small feedback disasters

How to get effective feedback

Luckily you can do a lot yourself to increase the chances of getting a useful response. Communicating clearly what type of feedback you need can save both parties time and reduce miscommunications. Most academics are reasonable people who want to help. Assuming that you’re working with one of them, here are four tips to increase your chances of receiving effective feedback.

1. Be clear on what you need

Try figuring out what you need help with. Do you need help on a specific section, or do you need feedback on the entire draft? Consider also the type of help you need. The different stages of writing a paper come with different types of feedback. For example, a first draft doesn’t need many comments on writing style.

Once you know what feedback you need, you can explain this to the person who is going to assess your work. It can help to ask directing questions, such as:

• Do you agree with this argument?
• Can you suggest how to improve the structure of the Introduction?
• Am I missing any important citations here?

Sherran Clarence researches PhD success and lists some good questions on her blog as well, and I also like the questions listed over at Cambridge Coaching.

To get a balanced view on you work it can help to request positive feedback as well, and ask your feedbacker to explain why they gave certain feedback. I also recommend pointing out what you haven’t written yet but are planning to – this reduces the risk of getting unnecessary feedback (e.g. ‘I’m missing a section on Y’.).

Do you have a supervisor who contradicts themselves in subsequent feedback rounds? Remind them of what they asked you to do. They most likely forgot, and seeing your work in a new light gave them new ideas.

2. Find the right person

Some people are great at big picture stuff, others are at good structural feedback, and some love to correct spelling and grammar. If you have knowledge of people’s feedback skills, this can help to find the right person. For example:

• Do you need to consult someone on a particular piece of content? Find the expert you need. This is often a supervisor or co-author.
• Do you need feedback on the structure of the paper? Find someone who knows how other papers in your specific field are written.
• Do you need feedback on overall readability? Find someone with a decent understanding of academic writing in your wider discipline.

Giving good feedback is a lot of work, so cherish the people who do this well.

3. Prepare the text (but not too much)

It takes less effort to evaluate a text that reads well than trying to decipher a giant mess. However, first drafts are always a bit of a mess, so don’t waste time trying to achieve perfection. Instead, check for quick fixes. That way it’s just that little bit easier for your feedbacker to get the gist. Look out for:

• Incomprehensible sentences
• Unexplained symbols and abbreviations
• Missing captions, missing axis titles, and missing units

Run the text through a decent spelling checker and read it out loud to filter out the most obvious mistakes. Also, write as clearly as possible. Even if you know something is wrong, but you don’t know the right thing, write the wrong thing. It’s easier to correct a blatant error than a vague one. I admit this can feel risky because you might feel stupid. But, people generally like pointing out clear mistakes. Make use of it.

4. Decode the feedback

It can be tempting to disregard feedback that seems vague or irrelevant. However, there’s a reason someone gave you this critique, and it’s often a good idea to figure out how to implement it. Science writer Natalie Parletta states it well in this post on dealing with reviewer feedback:

“If something is unclear to the reviewer, there’s a good chance that it will be unclear to other readers.”

Thus, it’s best to figure out what needs to be done, why, and how to do it. Here are a few things you can do:

• Ask why your feedbacker gave this particular feedback.
• Ask if they have any suggestions on how to improve it, or know someone who could help.
• If the feedback is quite general (e.g. ‘this doesn’t flow’), ask for specifics (‘what does flow mean’) and examples (‘where exactly does it lack flow’).

In case of content-related questions, it’s useful to know that some academics are unskilled at recognising (or admitting) the limits of their knowledge, and will circle around a question without answering it. If you find yourself more confused than before you asked the question, they may not know the answer. Two options remain: push harder and see if they know, or find someone else.

When a feedbacker is unresponsive (slow to answer, vague, or you’re working with an anonymous peer reviewer), you’ll have to mindread. Experienced collaborators (co-authors, but also fellow PhD’s or postdocs) can help here, as they’ve probably seen similar feedback before. You can also use guidebooks specially written to decipher feedback, such as “How to Fix Your Academic Writing Trouble” or this book chapter on deciphering feedback.

It takes two

Ideal feedback explains what needs to be done, why, and how do to it. Attaining such a perfect level of communication is hard, but constructing clear questions, finding the right person, and preparing your work can increase your chances of getting a useful assessment.

Of course, successful communication about your work depends on the efforts of both parties involved. If all else fails, you can find others to help you make sense of a particular response. Best of luck!