shorten manuscript
teixeirak opened this issue · 23 comments
We are currently at 11810 words.
From Holly: "We do permit extensions on occasion up to 10, 000 words and I appreciate that the nature and scope of this review, which contains a large literature survey, may warrant additional space. I would therefore be happy to grant you an extension for this manuscript, but given that the revision has grown the manuscript substantially and the fact that the Tansley editor would rarely approve a review over 10,000 words, I would be grateful if you could consider if there is any way that you could edit the manuscript down in size before re-uploading it."
The strategy will be to convert some content to SI notes. First step is to read through the manuscript and find ~2000 words worth of content that feels like it’s getting into too many technical details/ content only of interest to specialists, or anyplace the manuscript feels like it’s dragging. Let's start a list of candidate content in this issue and plan the strategy before we start cutting.
@teixeirak this is a good idea, okay I'll start working on this!
@Krista, i'm listing candidates to cut:
1.
2. I wonder if we could combine information under this section and cut?
3. 
4. Ecology, Warming section and scaling could be condensed?
5. Maybe we could combine the two paragraphs?
Canopy disturbance
Rising temperatures and severe droughts place canopy trees at particularly elevated risk of mortality. Moreover, large trees are also disproportionately impacted by other climate-related disturbances (e.g., wind, lighting, Gora & Esquivel-Muelbert, 2021) that are expected to intensify with climate change (IPCC, 2021), and they are also targeted by selective logging operations (e.g., Miller et al., 2011). Increase in the severity and frequency of heat waves, accompanied with an increase in VPD and ET, can exacerbate effects of drought on predominantly canopy trees, potentially causing large scale canopy die-back (Matusick et al., 2013; Teskey et al., 2015; Breshears et al., 2021). Forest fragmentation also disproportionately kills large trees by making them more vulnerable to wind, desiccation, and liana infestation (Laurance et al., 2006). Thus, canopies are becoming increasingly prone to disturbance and gap formation, which in turn increases incident radiation levels and temperatures within the forest (Jucker et al., 2018; Stark et al., 2020). Such changes often result in increased growth of smaller trees, which benefit from increased light (Bennett et al., 2015; Hogan et al., 2019; Nunes et al., 2022), and wetter forests can prove quite resilient to canopy disturbance (Miller et al., 2011). However, this shift to hotter and drier microclimates makes some forests more susceptible to further disturbances, for example, increasing fire risk (Brando et al., 2014; Aragão et al., 2018). Severe degradation impacts can cause dramatic ecological state changes (e.g., the transition from forest to more open, savanna-like vegetation in tropical forest regions through ‘savannization’) and non-linear threshold responses in energy balance and associated microclimates, with implications for forest-atmosphere interactions (Stark et al., 2020). Such dynamics are likely to be amplified by warming temperatures, such that climate change is pushing some of the world’s forests into alternative stable states wherein forest can persist as long as the canopy remains largely intact, but may have reduced probability of recovering and persisting when affected by severe canopy disturbance (Tepley et al., 2017; Flores et al., 2017; Miller et al., 2019; McDowell et al., 2020).
Canopy disturbance poses an increasing threat to the biodiversity of understory species that are otherwise buffered from climatic extremes (Scheffers et al., 2013; Greiser et al., 2019). Canopy structure affects understory species composition, which has been shown to shift under warming and canopy disturbance (Maes et al., 2020; Majasalmi & Rautiainen, 2020; Bertrand et al., 2020). In the understory, warming is disproportionately affecting the less thermally-adapted plant species, resulting in associated plant community thermophilization (Duque et al., 2015; Greiser et al., 2019; Zellweger et al., 2020). If such compositional shifts towards more thermally-adapted species fail to keep up with the pace of warming, the ecosystem-level resilience to canopy disturbance that is often provided by smaller trees (e.g., Miller et al., 2011) will be destroyed, resulting in breakdown of canopy structure and the potential state changes described above.
@NidhiVinod , sorry to be so slow on this. I haven't forgotten-- just have another paper revision that really needs to get done.
@NidhiVinod , I think we could create a note describing how vertical profiles vary across forest types. I've highlighted content that could go there in the word document I created. Those sections add up to ~800 words. These include both of the sections in sections 1 and 2 that you identified above.
@NidhiVinod , here's a rough estimate of how many words my suggestions (see word doc) would cut:
Note_yellow: ~800 words
Note_green?: ~250
Note_blue: ~300
Note_biochemical protection against light and heat damage: ~500 (section currently 700 words. Keep ~200, put rest in note).
Note_pink: 500
total move to notes: ~2350
condensing:
1st par intro: 100
1st par leaf traits: 100-200 (alternatively, we could make a note on light vs height driving traits)
tree ecology: 100-200
warming section: 350
modeling: 100
cut 50 excessive citations: 200
total condensing: 950-1150
Total: 3400
All this would get us down to ~8400 words. That would be more than needed, so we don't need to do all of this if you disagree, or if they don't seem to make sense once we get in to actually make the changes.
Note that while getting down under 10,000 is probably all that's needed to get it accepted, getting it down closer to 8000 is likely to make it easier to read, and therefore more influential.
@NidhiVinod , I think we could create a note describing how vertical profiles vary across forest types. I've highlighted content that could go there in the word document I created. Those sections add up to ~800 words. These include both of the sections in sections 1 and 2 that you identified above.
@teixeirak, sorry for the late reply. I have been sick the last couple of days. Will start working on this tomorrow!
@NidhiVinod , here's a rough estimate of how many words my suggestions (see word doc) would cut:
Note_yellow: ~800 words Note_green?: ~250 Note_blue: ~300 Note_biochemical protection against light and heat damage: ~500 (section currently 700 words. Keep ~200, put rest in note). Note_pink: 500 total move to notes: ~2350
condensing: 1st par intro: 100 1st par leaf traits: 100-200 (alternatively, we could make a note on light vs height driving traits) tree ecology: 100-200 warming section: 350 modeling: 100 cut 50 excessive citations: 200 total condensing: 950-1150
Total: 3400
All this would get us down to ~8400 words. That would be more than needed, so we don't need to do all of this if you disagree, or if they don't seem to make sense once we get in to actually make the changes.
Note that while getting down under 10,000 is probably all that's needed to get it accepted, getting it down closer to 8000 is likely to make it easier to read, and therefore more influential.
@teixeirak, I'm back and looking at the word document! The highlights make sense to me, and what you have suggested to cut also makes the whole document more crisp and a good quicker read! I agree with the cutting. One thing is that, for the reviewer's comment on the micromet, should we just mention that we moved the description to notes?
@NidhiVinod , here's a rough estimate of how many words my suggestions (see word doc) would cut:
Note_yellow: ~800 words Note_green?: ~250 Note_blue: ~300 Note_biochemical protection against light and heat damage: ~500 (section currently 700 words. Keep ~200, put rest in note). Note_pink: 500 total move to notes: ~2350
condensing: 1st par intro: 100 1st par leaf traits: 100-200 (alternatively, we could make a note on light vs height driving traits) tree ecology: 100-200 warming section: 350 modeling: 100 cut 50 excessive citations: 200 total condensing: 950-1150
Total: 3400
All this would get us down to ~8400 words. That would be more than needed, so we don't need to do all of this if you disagree, or if they don't seem to make sense once we get in to actually make the changes.
Note that while getting down under 10,000 is probably all that's needed to get it accepted, getting it down closer to 8000 is likely to make it easier to read, and therefore more influential.
@teixeirak, let me know if i should start moving them to SI notes?
Glad you like these suggestions!
Yes, please go ahead and start moving things to notes. I'd recommend that you treat the numbering of notes the same as we do figures (i.e., assign numbers at the beginning of the document and automate throughout the text) in case we decide to add or subtract notes.
Regarding responses to reviewers comments, we'll treat the notes as part of the publication, specifying locations in the notes the same as you would specify other locations. (That is, addressing a reviewer concern in the notes counts just as it would if the change were in the main manuscript.)
@teixeirak, I incorporated Tom's edits and cut a few other sentences. Wondering what your thoughts are and how do we do the word count again? Just want to make it is right.
I would probably need to change the reviewer's responses too right? Because the sentences might be shorter now.
I will be doing field work tomorrow, so I am hoping to work on our manuscript all day today!
@teixeirak, so far we still have 10,846 if the word count I have is right. Just need to cut another 846.
Maybe I could move the mechanistic part of the models to notes? But seems like R1 was excited about modelling. So now I am unsure what to move to notes? Tleaf Biophysical drivers?
Thanks for the great progress, @NidhiVinod ! I've just finished a couple deadlines and will look at this carefully now.
Yes, unfortunately you'll need to go back and update responses to reviewers.
@NidhiVinod , I wouldn't bother updating response to reviewers until we finish the shortening process
@teixeirak, sounds good! I updated the responses to reviewers!
@NidhiVinod , I wouldn't bother updating response to reviewers until we finish the shortening process
Ohh I already did, but it's okay. I can redo the sections we shorten.
We're still 600 words over. Two options:
1- further condensing. I've identified a couple places that could benefit from condensing, but obviously it's getting harder
2- move content to notes. It looks like you've created /started creating "Note S1: Vertical variation in forest structure across forests types". What's the status?
Yes, I started the Notes, but then moved to cutting words from Tom's comments.
So we could move some parts to notes, and condense the paragraphs you have suggested?
Perhaps easiest to discuss over a call. I could jump on a 20 minute call starting in ~5 minutes.
I sent you a message on Teams but don't think you got it. Which is easier for you? But I'm now down to <10 min before a distraction. Could we start in 15 min instead?
Yes! Starting in 15 mins works for me :) My teams account is for some reason not opening
Actually teams worked