The benefits of peer review

I have been through the process of publishing an article twice and both times the comments from the peer reviewers have significantly improved the quality of the paper.  This second time around, the comment back from the editor stated that "the article is accepted pending significant revisions". 

At first I was scared to look at the peer reviewer's comments.  Significant revisions is enough to frighten anyone, but upon closer examination, the comments helped to clarify potential issues with the article.  Here are some of the main problems that we had:

• made an unsubstantiated statement [found a statement in the research literature that backed up the point we were trying to make]
• tried to fit a case study paper into a research format [changed the format to include the following sections: Introduction, Literature Review, Class Name, Assessment, Discussion, Conclusion, References and Appendix]
• use of the term research in a paper for the Scientific community [used the term literature search instead of research]
• this last one is worthy of exploring further due to the perceptions of the term and how it is used in the library world and other academic arenas

I have also learned that as an author, you do not have to accept all of the changes that are suggested in your paper.  If you can provide a compelling reason why you did something, they are usually happy to accept your reason.

So far the copy editor has only had one further comment to make.  With any luck we will be seeing my second official citation, in the next month of two.