A colleague asked for my thoughts on a draft of a discussion of a published paper, and I responded:
My main suggestion is this: Yes, your short article is a discussion of another article, and that will be clear when it is published. But I think you should write it to be read on its own, which means that you should focus on the points you want to make, and only then talk about the target article and other discussions.
So I’d do like this:
paragraph 1: Your main point. The one takeaway you want the reader to get.
the next few paragraphs: Your other points. Everything you want to say.
a few paragraphs more: How this relates to the articles you are discussing. Where you agree with them and where you disagree. If there are things in the target article you like, say so. Readers will in part use the discussion to make their judgment on the main article, so if your discussion reads as purely negative, that will take its toll. Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do.
final paragraph: Summary and pointers to future work.
I hope this is helpful. This advice might sound kinda generic but I actually wrote it specifically with your article in mind!
Awhile ago I gave some advice on writing research articles. This is the first time I recall specifically giving advice on writing a discussion.
On two separate occasions recently, I have attempted to write a discussion of published work in journals that do not specifically have a category for comments on previous publications. On both occasions, my work was rejected due to lack of appropriate background or context. I couldn’t see how to do this without expanding the work into a major review article, most of which would not be relevant since my comments were specifically aimed at issues with the publications I was commenting on. Do you have recommendations regarding where/how to publish comments in work that is published in journals that do not specifically have a category for comments? Alternatively, what do you think about journals that don’t have such a category? It seems to me to indicate a lack of interest in post-publication review.
arXiv and/or the relevant “Xiv” for the topic area, then link on PubPeer? Not sure what else you can do if the journal won’t accept a comment
I tried to post a comment that wasn’t accepted by the journal to various preprint servers and was told they wouldn’t take comments … https://www.math.mcmaster.ca/bolker/misc/curveBP_peerJ.pdf for what it’s worth … accepting suggestions for venues …
I know that biorxiv doesn’t accept reviews or opinions, but EcoEvoRxiv does. See https://www.ecoevorxiv.com/faq.html
(and I think most of the family of OSF-supported rxivs are the same)
Wait a second, this advice sounds familiar ….