"Sh*t My Reviewers Say” is tumblr blog, that, in it’s own words, is dedicated to presenting “the harsh, the weird, the passive aggressive, the active aggressive and the downright mean comments practicing scientists receive on a regular basis.” Posts on the blog are “a reminder that all of us suck on a regular basis, and that that’s ok."
You can find them on Twitter as @YourPaperSucks, and here are some of our favorites so far (and please note these are verbatim, including misspellings):
“I am afraid this manuscript may contribute not so much towards the field’s advancement as much as toward its eventual demise.”
“There are many stylistics phrases to tidy which you can find yourself. ”
“In the course of this paper many stones were thrown but, unfortunately, no birds were harmed. ”
“This paper is conceptually unclear, and the causal argument/hypotheses are muddled. In short, it is a mess. I stopped reading after page 7. ”
“This interesting effort reminds one of the biblical tale of trying to extract water from a stone in the desert; from this metaphor, you may gather that we conclude that the effort did not yield useful data. ”
“I want to vomit; I can’t believe this paper was submitted. ”
“Have you no command of the English language? ”
“This result would be great if it were true. ”
“Unfortunately the manuscript is not well structured and the English is very poor. Usually I would attempt to improve this, but in this case the entire manuscript needs to be reworked – starting with the tittle. [sic]”
“...the sthanthard [sic] of writing is impercable [sic]... ”
“This is a terrible sentence. It has so many different things in it and not enough punctuation. ”
“The use of the word “surgeries” to mean “surgical procedures” instead of a surgeon’s office is a linguistic atrocity of a magnitude similar to “irregardless” or “I could care less.””
“It is clear that this manuscript will not win a beauty contest. There are still many awkward sentences that make me feel like listening to someone that scratches a glass plate with an iron nail.”
“This is a misleading paper, badly executed and negligently written. ”
“Considering by the end of the paper I had no idea what was being said, I don’t believe the paper was successful in its argument. In fact, it felt like the author was merely saying the same thing over and over again but with synonyms. ”
“The writing and data presentation are so bad that I had to leave work and go home early and then spend time to wonder what life is about.”
“I now have had a chance to look at this paper. I think it is a bit of a joke.”