Responding to Reviewers

The goal of a good response to reviewers is for the reviewer to get the impression that their perspective has been taken on board and processed thoughtfully. Put yourself in the mindset of the reviewer receiving a set of responses—you want them to look through one by one and in their head be saying 'tick' 'tick' tick', etc. that your response clearly engages with and addresses what they're concern was.

• You should include all of the review in your response, numbering each section of text around coherent points of feedback/critique, and responding inline to each in turn.

• The rule is that you should try to make a change to the text that you can quote to every comment/issue raised by a given reviewer.

  • Exceptions are when the reviewer is incorrect or mistaken, but even in this case, you can usually make a change that will improve the paper that could improve clarity and reduce the chance of a future reader making the same error.

• We have a few examples from recent papers—make sure you check these and read through them carefully to notice the style.

• I prefer working from a shared document (e.g., google doc) for this sort of writing, but an Overleaf doc is another good choice. In this case, put the document in a directory in the same overleaf project as the main text, so that all relevant documents are in one place.

• First respond to the comments in dot form and discuss with the other coauthors a strategy for each comment. It's important to get on the same page with a strategy before fleshing out thorough responses in text.

  • Getting the balance right between defending the choices you made in your study, versus submitting to every request by an overzealous reviewer, requires some subtlety in judging where the reviewer is at from their wording (and inferred disciplinary training/perspective), and also your time/capacity for running major new experiments.

    • If unsure, it's better to err on the side of following the reviewer's suggestion than the side of pushing back against the suggestion.: