How to be reviewer 2: Lessons in academic curmudgeonry

Academic publishing is both incredibly rewarding for authors and fraught with frustration and challenges. One such challenge is navigating critical peer reviews that can seem demeaning, condescending, or outright cruel. Colloquially, such reviews have been personified as "reviewer 2" on social media and in the literature. While some reviewer 2s may belittle authors on purpose, we believe most unintentionally do so due to a paucity of reviewing experience, challenges with establishing a rapport-building tone in their review writing or a different understanding of what type of language is destructive and demeaning. Given the amount of time, effort and care that authors pour into their manuscripts, it can be easier to visualise reviewer 2s as Scrooge-like curmudgeons whose purpose in life is to bring misery to other scholars. In this manuscript, the authors use their experience in Medical Education's editorial internship as a framing to create a caricature of the miserly reviewer 2. The authors hope that by creating such an absurd lampoon, they encourage readers to consider that most reviewer 2s are simply in need of coaching rather than personality transplants.