ABSTRACT
Myers (1990), Knorr-Cetina (1981), and Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995), among others, described how final versions of scientific articles emerge from a kind of negotiation with reviewers that occurs during the revision and acceptance process. The comments that Swendsen, Bouzida, and Kumar received from their heterogeneous readers required a similar kind of re-visioning of their paper. In response to the feedback that David, the biophysicist, gave on a graph, the physicists generated additional data and evidence to support their arguments. Ken, the biologist, generally agreed with the physicists’ presentation; therefore, his feedback did not elicit any substantive response from the physicists. However, George, the chemist, questioned how they had situated and defined their work, feedback with which Swendsen, Bouzida, and Kumar disagreed, and to which they responded by sharpening and clarifying their own position. Looking at the physicists’ responses to these readers’ feedback shows how they first needed to comprehend the viewpoints of audiences with different knowledge, experience, criteria, and procedures of understanding before they could begin to revise the DOMC paper.
