How to respond to reviewer comments

Before you write anything

1. Read the decision letter twice, then put it away for a day. First reactions to criticism are rarely the right tone for a reply.
2. Read the editor's summary closely. It tells you which comments matter for acceptance.
3. Number and sort every comment: required changes, quick fixes, clarifications, and points you disagree with.
4. Note the deadline. If the work will take longer, ask the editor for an extension before it passes.

The structure of a response letter

Editors read many of these, so make yours easy to check. A clear layout:

1. A short note to the editor: thanks, the manuscript number, and a summary of the main changes in three to five lines.
2. Each reviewer in turn, with every comment copied in full and numbered (Reviewer 1, Comment 1).
3. Under each comment, your response, then the change, quoted, with its location in the revised manuscript.

Reviewer 2, Comment 3
The sample size seems small for the claimed effect.

Response: We agree that the sample limits the precision of the estimate. We have
added a power analysis and a confidence interval for the main effect, and
acknowledge the limitation in the Discussion.

Change: Methods, Section 2.4, page 7, lines 152-160; Discussion, page 15,
lines 340-346.

Tone that works

• Thank the reviewers once at the start, not before every answer.
• Answer the substance; do not argue about how the comment was phrased.
• Use “we have revised” rather than “as we already stated” — if a reviewer missed something, the text was not clear enough.
• Keep each response as short as the point allows, and quote the new text so the reviewer does not have to search for it.

How to disagree with a reviewer

You do not have to make every change a reviewer asks for. When a request is wrong or outside the paper's scope:

1. acknowledge the point and why it is reasonable to raise;
2. explain your position with evidence — data, an analysis, or citations;
3. offer something: a clarified sentence, a footnote, or a new limitation that shows you took the point seriously.

Editors judge the reasoning, not who wins. A calm, well-supported disagreement is accepted far more often than a silent omission.

Conflicting reviewers and big requests

• When two reviewers want opposite things, choose the approach the evidence supports, explain it to both, and tell the editor how you resolved the conflict.
• When a reviewer asks for new experiments, do them if they are feasible and central to the claim. If not, explain why, and narrow the claim so the evidence you have supports it.
• When the editor and a reviewer disagree, follow the editor — the editor makes the decision.

Resubmission checklist

• Every comment numbered, answered and linked to a location.
• A highlighted or tracked-changes manuscript and a clean one, if the journal asks for both.
• Page and line numbers in the letter matching the final file.
• Figures, tables, references and supplementary files updated together.
• New or rewritten passages proofread — the grammar checker catches slips introduced in a hurry.
• Rewritten text checked for overlap with the papers you added — the plagiarism checker shows exactly which passages match.
• Every reference you added verified to exist, with the right DOI.