Scholarly Negotiation: Stance in Author Responses to Peer Review in a Medical Journal

In high-stakes academic publishing, author responses to reviewers (ARRs) play a crucial yet underexplored role in the review process. These responses provide researchers with a valuable opportunity to engage in dialogue with expert peers and negotiate revisions that shape their scholarly work. This critical written exchange, however, presents formidable challenges, as authors must walk a fine line between defending their work and accommodating criticism. To examine how this rhetorical tension is managed, this study analyzes stance in 120 ARRs from the British Medical Journal . The findings show how authors deploy stance markers to position themselves in relation to reviewers, who hold significant influence over publication outcomes. Notably, the distribution of stance markers varies significantly across functional units, with gratitude units containing the highest density of stance markers, particularly attitude markers, while justifications more frequently use hedges and boosters. Furthermore, by tracking responses across two rounds of peer review, we show that authors recalibrate their stance: self-mentions and hedges decrease while boosters increase, suggesting a shift from cautious negotiation to more assertive positioning as the review process progresses. By illuminating this occluded genre, the study contributes to understanding how interpersonal resources manage reviewer–author interaction in academic publishing.