怎样写好国外期刊修改稿的Cover Letter

Cover Letter是一篇文章的外衣,对国外投稿能否成功很关键,一般投稿时的Cover Letter并不是很重要,只要说明你稿件的研究方向及创新点,并声明没有在其他期刊发表过.最难写的就是Revised Manuscript中的Cover Letter,这将关系到是否录用你的稿件,或要进一步审稿.国外专家讲求的是精益求精,老外们对文章都很严谨的,一个单词哪怕是一个介词的使用都是很有考究的,因此会提出很多似乎对文章无关紧要的修改意见,但是这你要给予充分的重视.通过国外发表几篇文章后,开始一直失败,但是我没有放弃,通过总结现在将一些经验和大家分享,以免大家走很多不必要的弯路.
   为了更好理解,我用我发的一篇文章作为例子来说明:
   这里是期刊审稿人的修改意见:
Dear *****,
The review of your manuscript, Thermal Decomposition and Kinetics Studies on 1, 4-dinitropiperazine (DNP), submitted to Journal of Hazardous Materials has been completed.  The reviewers recommend the need for minor revisions. Please revise your manuscript according to the reviewers' comments attached, and re-submit to me your revised version of the manuscript including an itemized response to each reviewer's comments. 
   Please submit your revised submission before Jul 11, 2007. I will then begin the re-review process.
   Please note that revised manuscripts will be sent for review because revising a manuscript does not automatically mean it will be accepted for publication.

   For your guidance, reviewers' comments are appended below.

On your Main Menu page is a folder entitled "Submissions Needing Revision". You will find your submission record there. 

    Please ensure that the article conforms to the format of the Journal.  In particular make sure that all the articles in your references have titles included.  The Journal Guide for Authors is available on the Journal homepage [url]http://www.elsevier.com/locate/hazmat[/url]

     When submitting your revised manuscript, please ensure that you upload the source files (e.g. Word). Uploading a PDF file at this stage will create delays should your manuscript be finally accepted for publication. If your revised submission does not include the source files, we will contact you to request them.

Once again, thank you for your interest in Journal of Hazardous Materials.


                         Yours sincerely,

                         Merv Fingas, PhD
                              Editor
                    Journal of Hazardous Materials

                       Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer #1: The paper reports on the thermal decomposition and kinetics of DNP.  
It is a welcome addition to the literature and appectable for publication after some revision:
(i)  Please provide large basis-set DFT calculations to support the assignment of the IR bands of DNP.
(ii) Please assign ALL IR bands of Fig. 5

Reviewer #2: authors have carried out work on the thermal analysis of the dinitropiperazine. The new information reported in the paper is scanty. The large amount of data has been already reported by the several researchers on the thermal analysis of dinitropiperazine (See the reference section of the paper and also reviewer has done the scopus search). The only new information reported in this paper is of the T-Jump IR studies and DSC studies under different pressures, which may adds on to the existing scientific data base. There is not much novelty in the reported work.

The Table 1 and figure 1 need to be deleted from the paper since it is already well reported in the literature.

Table 2 and figure 3 gives the same information. Authors are requested to delete Table 2 and the same information may be explained in the results and discussion part of the paper.

May i also kindly request authors to update the literature survey till date on DNP in the introduction part of the paper using Chemical abstracts on disk (CA on CD) data base.

The quality  and clarity of the figures in the paper need to be improved.

English need to be improved.

The paper is recommended for short communication after the minor revision.

Reviewer #3: The paper is okay in terms of contents.However,since it has been written by
a Chinese, the english is very poor and as such requires a lot of corrections and editing by your team.

The authors have used ozawa and Kissenger methods to find out activation
energy.However,they have given data for activation energy by ozawa method
only under 3.4 thermal decomposition kinetics).The data for Eo by  Kissenger methods  should
also be included in the paper.
Also,captions of Figs 1,3 &5 are missing.

Reviewer #4: This paper is promising but could be improved by better kinetic analysis.
1.  Kissinger's method is OK as a first approximation, but Friedman's method is the best isoconversional method.  Even Ozawa has abandoned his method in favor of Friedman's.
2.  The method of comparing a large number of kinetic models against data at a single heating rate (page 5) is invalid, discredited, and should not be published.  This issue has been discussed in several papers by Vyzovkin and in a international kinetic study published by Brown et al, Thermochemica Acta 355, 125-143, 2000, and following papers.  Consequently, there is no real evidence presented that the equation is first-order.  In fact, from my studies of energetic materials, including RDX and HMX, I would have thought that nucleation-growth kinetics would be most appropriate.  However, I would have to do a more rigorous kinetic analysis of the data to know for sure.

3.  The best way to judge a kinetic model is how it compares with data at multiple heating rates (using a single set of parameters).  Such a comparison is not present in this paper, so it is difficult to judge the validity of the kinetic parameters.

4.  The author's discussion of HMX kinetics is good in some respects but out of date in others.  More recent papers by multiple institutions place the activation energy for HMX closer to 150 kJ/mol.  A commonly cited paper on this is by Wight and Vyazovkin, Ann Rev Phys Chem 48, 119, 1997.  A more recent but harder paper to get is by Burnham and Weese in the proceedings of the 2005 ICT conference.  Henson has published a correlation in the detonation symposium showing that explosion times scale with an activation energy of about 150 kJ/mol.  Active workers in energetic materials should have access to these materials.

   看完了这个,是不是会觉得很头疼,是的老外就是这么认真.要求很具体仔细,审稿细致深入.下面就是看你怎么样回复这篇审稿意见了.我回复后的第三天就收到论文录用通知,估计他们没有再次送给审稿专家重审.因为我的Cover Letter他很满意,我是这样写的:
   
Dear ***,
My manuscript, *********************（论文题目）, was revised according to the reviewers' comments, and the itemized response to each reviewer’s comments is attached. Many thanks for your suggestion. I am so sorry to bring you so much trouble because of our careless. Correspondence and phone calls about this paper should be directed to ****（作者） at the following address，phone and e-mail：
Address: *********
Tel.: ********
Fax:*******
E-mail: **********
Thanks very much again for your attention to our paper．Once again, thank you for your help to our paper processing.
                                              Yours sincerely，  
                                                    ******
For your guidance, itemized response to each reviewer’s comments is appended below.

? Dear reviewer #1: 
(i) Suhithi M. Peiris, Richard, etc. (J. Phys. Chem. A, 104 (39), 8898 -8907, 2000. 10.1021)  had already reported large basis-set DFT calculations to support the assignment of the IR bands of DNP. 
(ii) We assigned all IR bands of Fig.5 (now change to fig.8).
(iii) Because of the IR study had been reported, the IR spectra (fig.1) was deleted form the paper. Anyway, thank you for your arduous work and instructive advice.

? Dear reviewer #2: 
(i) G. V. Sitonina, etc. (Russian Chemical Bulletin, Vol.28, 284-288) A study has been made of the kinetics of thermal decomposition of dinitropiperazine, in melts and in solution. As you said, the only new information reported in this paper is of the T-Jump IR studies and DSC studies under different pressures, which may adds on to the existing scientific data base. Nevertheless, the kinetics study in our paper is a supplement which is with multi-heating rate method.
(ii) The Table 1 and figure 1 was deleted from the paper and the correlative references were put forward.
(iii) Table 2 was deleted and the same information was explained in the results and discussion part of the paper.
(iv) We had update the literature survey till date on DNP in the introduction part of the paper and enriched the introduction of the paper.
(v) The figures were drawn again and the quality and clarity of them were improved.
(vi) English expression was improved a little and it’s my great honor to ask your help on the language aspect.

? Dear reviewer #3: 
(i) As a Chinese, our English is very poor and a few of corrections and editing had done by our team.
(ii) Now we only used Ozawa method to find out activation energy and you can check it in our paper again. According to reviewer #4, Kissinger method is invalid, discredited, and should not be published.
(iii) Figures and captions of them are changed.
(iv) At last, thank you for your arduous work and instructive advice.

? Dear reviewer #4: 
i. This paper was improved by a better kinetic analysis. The kinetic parameters were established by Ozawa's isoconversional method because there is no Friedman's calculation program in our institute.
ii. As you just said, the method of comparing a large number of kinetic models against data at a single heating rate is invalid.  After the kinetic study by isoconversional method with data at multiple heating rates, we found that nucleation-growth kinetics is more appropriate. You are seasoned in these aspects and it’s my great honor to ask your advice on these sorts of aspects.
iii. In order to judge a kinetic model, we did a comparison a single heating rate method with multi-heating method, and at last the kinetic parameters were judged.
iv. You are right; the discussion of HMX kinetics is really out of date.  The activation energy for HMX is closer to 150 kJ/mol. We had done the improvements in our paper. 
v. From your comments, it’s obvious that you are an expert in thermo analysis, and there is lots of shortage in our study which need your instruction. At last, I want to thank you sincerely for your suggestions and I feel so sorry that so much of your precious time was wasted on our paper revision.

这样的回复看似很复杂,其实这很有必要,你的回答一定要有条理并且要有针对性,针对每一个专家的意见分别做出自己的回应,其实这篇信也叫Response Letter. 这样一来,老外看出了你的一丝不苟,即使还有一些需要修正的小错误,他们也就不在乎了,自己帮你修正了.
  其实我们所处的专业不同,期刊的要求不同,专家的性格也不一样.但是总的来说就是四个字"一丝不苟",一定要认真对待修改意见.一般论文投到国外,如果满足期刊内容要求的前提下,一般会给你一个修改意见,不会直接拒绝.即使拒绝也是在第一次修改不满足要求的情况下拒绝的.他们想的是你改都改不好,还有什么话说.
  最后,我希望大家多多发表高质量的科技论文,多到国外投稿,这样不是为了多几篇SCI,是多增加国际交流,给自身的发展创造条件.特别是对于想出国深造的研究学者们.谨以此和大家共勉!
   本文多有论述不当之处,望大家批评指正!谢谢!