Negotiating the path to publication: Functional units and lexical bundles in author responses to peer review

The critical role of peer-review reports in validating research quality and upholding academic integrity is well recognized. The genre of author response letters (ARLs) which address these reviews, however, remains an underexplored, yet equally significant facet of academic publishing. This study seeks to fill this gap by analysing the functional units and lexical bundles that characterize successful ARLs. Drawing on a corpus from the BMJ, we identified seven functional units in this author-reviewer interaction, including two highly frequent units (Expressing gratitude and Discussing revisions), three regular units (Providing clarifications, Accepting the feedback, and Justifying research decisions) and two infrequent units (Acknowledging limitations and Requesting further details). We also identified the recurrent lexical bundles that facilitate these communicative acts. Compared with research articles, ARLs tend to favour active verb-related bundles, which serve to outline revisions and improve the accessibility of responses for reviewers. The frequent use of participant-oriented bundles further underlines the genre's dialogic nature, where authors must navigate not only the technical aspects of feedback but also the socio-rhetorical and interpersonal dynamics. By demystifying this high-stakes genre, this research not only aids authors in coping with the reviewer feedback, but also informs pedagogical resources for EAP instruction.