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I'm a PhD student in sociology. I'm approaching graduation and facing a lot of pressure to publish. Specifically, one of my manuscripts is already on its fourth revision. However, I've noticed that my supervisors keep raising "new issues" for me to revise every time they review it.

I understand that it's normal to continuously improve a manuscript, but the "new issues" they keep pointing out are things that should have been raised during earlier reviews. These are not just aesthetic issues: for example, one advisor asked me to change measurement scales, which would require changing all my data and possibly collecting new data. If such a change were really necessary, it should have been brought up years ago. In this instance, I was able to convince him that my original choice was appropriate, but this pattern has happened countless times over the past four years.

It makes me suspect that when the submission deadline was still far away, these two supervisors didn’t carefully read my manuscript, or only selectively read the parts they were interested in (just to "get the task done"). This behavior is extremely frustrating for me.

In theory, the more you revise a manuscript, the fewer problems should remain. But every time I seriously spend a lot of time fixing the issues they previously pointed out, they go back and raise problems that should have been identified much earlier.

Here is another example. When I was in my second year of PhD, I submitted a paper to an academic conference. That paper was revised five or six times at that time, until they thought it was almost "final." However, now that I’m in my fourth year and want to submit the same paper to a journal, one of the supervisors reviewed it again and suddenly said that a major section had a problem and needed to be completely rewritten and this wasn't a simple issue like needing to add more data, but a fundamental writing/logic problem that required reworking. This made me wonder if he had even read that paper properly two years ago (even though he participated deeply in the earlier revisions at that time).

I'm very overwhelmed and about to break down because of their behavior. I want to ask: Is this normal? Because their behavior disrupts my work plans and causes me a lot of mental exhaustion.

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  • Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on Academia Meta, or in Academia Chat. Comments continuing discussion or containing answers will be removed. Commented Apr 29, 2025 at 21:04
  • What is your supervisor's personality like? Are they angrily accusing you of making mistakes and demanding you fix them? Or are they kindly making suggestions based on things they found interesting? Commented Apr 29, 2025 at 21:08

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Supervisor revision commentary (like peer review at the publication stage) does not in general work linearly through the paper. Revisions that clarify some points will turn up new places where other things need to be clarified, and it is often not worth the time to revise an introduction or background section until after the body of the text has been locked down.

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    @wsdmv1995: People’s understanding and interpretations of things change. Maybe your supervisor learned something new in the intervening time, maybe they have more attention to give it now than before. The key goal is to make sure the paper is right, not just submitted. Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 2:08
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    Hmmm, the things described by OP seem to go well beyond working "nonlinearly". Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 5:27
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    @Ben: I’ve based my answer on, the first scenario, “areas that should have been reviewed a long time ago if they had been following the manuscript sequentially”, and the second, working on revisions for a journal-grade paper two years after the conference-grade version. There may be other issues at play, but I don’t think it would serve the OP to have an expectation of sequential processing or “issue preservation” (the legal principle that issue not brought up in an initial trial can’t be brought up in appeals), especially not for internal revisions. Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 6:05
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    @RLH what's the sense behind raising issues with the main body without going through the introductory sections first? If a supervisor only realizes there's something wrong in the introduction after four years it means the entire rest of the work needs to be retouched or completely rethought. There's working non-linearly, and there's being distracted and having a careless working ethic that only is more work for the supervisor as well because they've wasted time reading sections that turn out to have to be scrapped because they found an issue with the introduction four years later. Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 8:05
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    @maliebina it's somewhat common to expect that the introductory sections will be rewritten after it's clear what the main body of the work will say, so it's reasonable to not even look at minor issues in the introduction until you're approaching submission, otherwise if you start with the intro you'll just waste time polishing something that will be completely rewritten three times before you're done. Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 11:28
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Is this normal? Because their behavior disrupts my work plans and causes me a lot of mental exhaustion.

It's certainly not uncommon. But it is understandable that this is causing you stress, particularly if it's a regular occurrence.

The two answers you have already received, in my opinion, nicely showcase the issue that PhD students and supervisors face when reviewing manuscripts - everybody is aware that, in principle, it would be ideal to provide a complete list of comments at any point in time, but in practice this often does not happen. Maybe due to time pressure, maybe because a revision has unearthed new problems that were not visible before, maybe just because the supervisor had more time to think about it in the meantime.

The solution, as usual, is to improve your communication with your supervisors. Supervisors should indicate how thoroughly they have reviewed which parts of the paper. Supervisors should point out when and if they have changed their mind on aspects they have previously found unproblematic (this is not an "admission of guilt" of some kind, but supervisors, I believe, do owe students an explanation). Students should expect that things change throughout the process. Throughout the process, supervisors should take the needs of their students into account when prioritising which issues are must-fix and which are nice-to-have.

All of the above comes naturally if students and supervisors have regular, decent, honest conversations about the work. In my experience it only ever becomes a problem once relationships degrade and communication breaks down - this is when students and supervisors both start "assuming" (e.g., the supervisor assumes they are reviewing an early draft whereas the student assumes this is going to be the last revision). This is when these troubles start to creep in.

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    This is a real good answer because it adresses the underlying problem that causes this. I had once a similar issue, where a supervisor was really nitpicking and not getting it done. So we sat down and I told him my worries, the limited time of my contract, the differences in presentation of information over the last decades, the not fruitful meetings where a too large team was discussing typos and such stuff of sections that were done the last time. I was nearly leaving that project. But this complicated conversation where I put al my worries on the table helped a lot. Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 13:46
  • Thank you for your response. Looking back, I don’t think I’ve ever had any conflicts with my supervisors that would have damaged our relationship. I’m more inclined to believe that this is just their working style (because they’ve been like this since my first year of the PhD — and I even confirmed with one of my fellow PhD students that one of the supervisors tends to act this way with everyone). Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 14:33
  • I think one of the reasons why the dynamic among the four of us feels so strange is that one of my supervisors — particularly one of them — is quite influential in our field. So whenever she offers suggestions or feedback, the other two supervisors and I often don’t feel comfortable openly disagreeing with her. I know this isn’t ideal in academic work, but we have to admit that there’s a certain degree of “academic politics” — or perhaps even “academic hegemony” — at play. As a result, we often ended up going along with whatever she said on key issues. Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 14:33
  • The problem is, over the years, she would often get “sudden inspirations” and want to “rework” certain parts of my thesis — and again, no one really dared to push back. And so the cycle just kept repeating itself. Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 14:33
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    @wsdmv1995 A breakdown of communication is often, but not necessarily, due to a conflict. And the "cycle" you talk about as well as the fact that "nobody dares to push back" are things that do not sound very healthy to me on a fundamental level. You need to discuss things openly. Commented Apr 29, 2025 at 11:00
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I want to emphasise a point that @xLeitix made in passing. Supervisors are not superhuman. Thus, irrespective of how much attention they pay it at the appropriate time, they will never catch all the flaws at any given time. The more they think about it, the more things they will come up with. They could read it in great detail and write paragraphs about every page, and they'll probably still think of something else the next week in the shower. The fact is that no paper is ever perfect, will always contain flaws, and can always been improved. The question is, when is it "good enough"? There is no correct answer to this. One way of thinking about it is "will it get through review?". But of course, because there are always problems remaining in a paper, the reviewer will undoubtedly find things you've missed, however many revisions you've put it through. Conversely, the reviewer will almost always miss some flaws.

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Off the top of my head, I can think of three cases where I had written a paper, it all looked good, my coauthors agreed, I was gearing up to submit it, and then I (or a coauthor) discovered some fatal flaw of a subsection. This never required scrapping the whole thing, but it did necessitate reanalysis/replotting/rewriting of part of it. This is frustrating.

But that's also the thing about research: You don't know what you don't know. Something might seem fine...until you realize you were wrong. Maybe you figuratively kick yourself (or your coauthors) for wasting your time, but you really shouldn't. That's just how things go; nobody is perfect. And of course, you don't want to publish something you know is wrong, so you take the time to get it right.

If your advisors are finding significant errors, thank them. If they are insisting on incessant cosmetic changes then use diplomacy.

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I don’t see anything wrong with this. If your supervisor - or just about anyone working through a pre-publication text - finds a problem with your manuscript the proper course of action is to tell you.
It’s your job and privilege as the author of your manuscript to decide if the feedback requires action on your part.

What isn’t normal is that you consider your supervisor as a reviewer whose responsibility it is to notify you of all errors in your work. This is your work and it is your responsibility to spot errors. How you do that is up to you - asking for help from colleagues is common everywhere I worked, but in the end this is just help for your responsibility.
You should be happy that you get help, not be upset that the help isn’t perfect.

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  • Where did OP state they are unthankful for the supervisor doing the job they are paid to do? The matter is that at this point the supervisor's help isn't really helping but rather hindering the OP financially. Commented Apr 29, 2025 at 14:19
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    @maliebina I have no idea what your comment is supposed to say. I haven’t called the OP unthankful. I would have definitely not talked about what the supervisor is paid to do, because in the places I know they aren’t paid for providing manuscript feedback. I have absolutely no idea what that part about "hindering the OP financially" refers to. I urge you to write a new comment with explicit criticism instead of faulty rhetorics. Commented Apr 29, 2025 at 15:06
  • Supervisors are paid to act as supervisors to their students, that includes reading and providing feedback on manuscripts. Commented Apr 30, 2025 at 3:39
  • @Tom "that includes reading and providing feedback on manuscripts" Okay, let’s roll with it. Where does it say providing 100% thorough, absolutely accurate reviews? That a supervisor should review their students' papers doesn’t mean the level of detail the OP seems to be expecting. Commented Apr 30, 2025 at 4:50
  • One would hope that the reviews are 100% accurate, but this is probably not an obligation. It is down to the person writing the manuscript to make sure it is correct, not the supervisor and not the reviewers. Commented Apr 30, 2025 at 5:43
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I recently had to deal with a supervisor like this on a postdoc that I did and it is annoying, but you have to be diplomatic and see it that this person has expertise and experience to take on board.

Ultimately you want the manuscript to be better, not worse, so you carefully consider (maybe after having left things for a day or two) whether what they are suggesting would actually improve the manuscript.

If you still feel that it doesn't, then calmly and rationally explain to them why you think this (it's the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable, as Michael Berry puts it).

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You're right --- that is annoying and it shouldn't happen

Generally speaking, a thorough review of a paper should identify all (or at least most) issues up-front. There is an exception when the problems are so extensive that you start with the serious issues and hold off diagnosis of other issues until later (in which case you communicate that review method to the author). This is standard practice in reviews of papers in academic journals, where there is an expectation that referees will try to avoid raising new issues in subsequent review of a revised paper, unless they have flagged that they will do that in their initial review. It is not completely out of bounds to raise new issues (if it will improve the paper then that is all to the best), but doing so repeatedly is generally a sign of a lack of thorough examination in the initial review and it is not a good look for the reviewer.

From the sounds of what you have described, your supervisors are not being sufficiently thorough in their early reviews of your work, and this is causing extended problems. You should raise this as a problem with your primary supervisor and let him/her know that you expect your work to be properly reviewed in the first instance to avoid this problem. (If you are uncomfortable communicating this yourself, please refer your supervisor to this answer and experienced academics can say the same thing.) The most charitable explanation for what is occurring is that your supervisors are reviewing with less scrutiny in your early drafts to allow for your inexperience in crafting a good paper the first time, and then they are gradually adding in further critique as you address initial issues. Even if this is the case, that approach ought to be clearly communicated to you, and the failure to communicate that review method is still a problem.

So no, this is not normal. It is lazy and abnormal.

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  • I think you completely understand what I’m saying. It’s like a family needing to do a big grocery shopping trip every week — normally, the family members should prepare a list of what they need to buy, along with which different stores they need to visit, in order to plan the most time- and energy-efficient route. Two of my advisors have made me feel that they have never properly planned how to revise my manuscript. Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 3:00
  • All along, It’s felt like they only start to somewhat seriously revise my work right before I submit the manuscript at the last minute. (This is also why, when the deadline is still far away, they usually just bring up some insignificant issues, but as the deadline approaches, they suddenly start raising “more important” problems — which often forces me to work overtime to fix these last-minute issues they hastily pointed out.) Commented Apr 28, 2025 at 3:00
  • I agree with this answer. It's lazy and abnormal. Last year I was sitting in on a supervisor's meetings with her PhD student, and she continually changed her mind about adding and deleting things. At one point, he protested that she had told him to do the opposite in an earlier meeting, and she said "You can't expect me to remember everything I said!" It's hard not to conclude that she was trying to sabotage the student's work. Commented Apr 30, 2025 at 7:03
  • @Flounderer: Thanks for your agreement. I typically abide by Hanlon's razor in these situations, but in any case, these types of examples do show a lack of professionalism in supervisory practice. Commented Apr 30, 2025 at 8:15
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I'm not sure that constant improvement is a real problem here. Normally reviewer should emit some commentary about at least a couple of paragraphs. That is a informal requirement. Nobody will mark your work as "100 out of 100", because that looks suspicious and it creates the feeling, that reviewer had not even bothered to read that document. And also in that case any further problems found will be treated as reviewers mistakes.

It is ok to receive comments and questions for each review round, so you can modify your work to cover even more possible questions or to make additional analysis of results. Normally I see that final questions are left to be answered during QnA part of your presentation. That makes your life easier, as questions are nearly-mandatory and that kind of questions allows you to plan an answer.

In any case, I think you should ask your professor about all those comments, to check is that real problem in your work or are those just improvement pointers.

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