Dear All,
		Thanks to many of you who posted comments and suggestions.
The review process concluded on our paper.

I will try to distil the suggestions I found useful with some comments from
my own experience.

1 Do not be put off by editor, argue for a technical review in advance of
normal peer review.
- After rejection without review, I sent a detailed technical document
pointing out what the paper relied on from the structure (in my case, 10A
movement of helices) and what the structure could reasonably be expected to
show. I was also very clear what the structure could not show, side chain
conformations and possible register errors. The editor sent this to an
expert and the article then went to normal review. This strategy may be very
useful for magazine publishing which we all decry but mostly aspire to.
These journals have had their fingers burned by general peer review for
technically complex problems low resol structures.

2 Try to find some way to establish unbiased electron density
- This was very helpful to me. I had not made it clear in my first draft
that the helices were omitted from the molecular replacement search model,
thus their location was unbiased. I made this clear in the revision and this
helped convince. In my case I had 7 fold xtal and 14 fold cross -xtal
averaging. I did this with the unbiased phases and the map was very clear.
(Steve Gamblin was first to tell me to do this). Clearly this does not apply
with heavy atom phasing.

3 Make the geometry very conservative
- I did this. I kept the model very conservative in geometry terms, tight
NCS, low deviations, common rotamers. I found adding H's improved the
refinement considerably in terms of geometry.

4 Sharpening
- Following the talks at the CCP4 workshop (Axel mainly but others also) I
sharpened my 14 fold averaged map (and 7 fold). The results were very good,
the register became much clearer.

5 Seek expert help
- In my case someone volunteered and kindly looked over the paper and told
me what they as a reviewer would want to see. I explicitly asked them NOT to
comment on the science or the paper or the correctness of the work, just
what figures and data would be needed to convince them of the technical
merits of this low res structure and that my inferences were not over
interpretation. I won't name somebody in case they get deluged although they
are acknowledged in the paper. I did NOT use them as a shield with the
editor though and did not mention them to the editor (except in the
acknowledgment section that the editor will not read). Any mistakes are mine
not theirs.

6 Have supporting biology
- We did but we made sure in the revised letter to the editor we made clear
what the structure predicted, how we tested it and what the results were.
Thus we changed the emphasis from what the structure "is" to what biology it
predicts that can be tested.


7 Be respectful of the editor
- Probably the best piece of advice. It is very easy to get on ones high
horse. However, the editor has a very difficult job. In our field there have
been several high profile mistakes at low resolution and in many cases the
authors will have just as forceful as me (or you) in their conviction that
in this case it is right. What's more peer review did not spot or stop these
efforts, so simply arguing for review did not help. I put myself in their
shoes when I wrote back to them. I tried to make clear what we were
uncertain about and what we were certain about. I avoided the blanket claims
of "any fool would know this is right". That said, my own use of phrases of
"we think this is correct" " appears convincing" in the original letter were
taken as lack of belief in our work rather than qualification. What worked
better was stating what we were sure was right and what we did not know.

8 The system tries to be fair
- Its easy to convince yourself the system is unfair and you are being
singled out. Like most people I don't have any contacts or influence with
editors (never met one). You win some and you loose some.


Once again, thanks to all who made such helpful suggestions and comments.

Best
Jim