Write rebuttals to reviewer feedback. Use when responding to peer reviews, preparing author responses, or addressing reviewer concerns for conference or journal resubmission. Trigger whenever the user mentions reviewer comments, rebuttal, author response, camera-ready revisions, or needs help crafting responses to referee reports — even informally like "help me respond to these reviews" or "the reviewers said X."
Craft effective point-by-point responses to peer reviews that address concerns, strengthen the paper, and maximize acceptance probability.
Before responding to any individual point:
For every point raised by every reviewer, classify it:
| Category | Description | Response Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Factual error in review | Reviewer misunderstood the paper | Politely clarify with evidence from the paper |
| Legitimate weakness | Valid criticism of the work | Acknowledge, explain mitigation or why it doesn't undermine core claims |
| Request for experiments | Additional analysis requested | Provide new results if feasible, or explain why infeasible within rebuttal period |
| Writing clarity | Unclear presentation | Acknowledge and describe specific revisions |
| Significance/novelty concern | Questions importance of work | Reframe contribution, provide additional context |
| Out of scope | Requests beyond paper's stated goals | Respectfully redirect to stated scope |
Rank concerns by impact on the final decision:
Focus effort on (1). Reviewers notice when critical concerns are dodged.
Organize responses by reviewer, addressing each point individually:
## Response to Reviewer 1
### R1.1: [Paraphrased concern]
**Response:** [Your response]
**Changes made:** [Specific revisions, if any]
### R1.2: [Next concern]
...
## Response to Reviewer 2
...
Follow this pattern for every response:
Example:
R1.3: The reviewer notes that baselines are weak and do not include Method X.
Response: We agree that comparing against Method X strengthens the evaluation. We have added results for Method X in Table 2 (revised). Our method outperforms Method X by 3.2% on benchmark Y, confirming our original claims.
Changes: Added Method X baseline to Table 2 and discussion in Section 4.2.
When one reviewer is very positive and another is very negative:
Based on rebuttal promises, create a revision plan:
| Mistake | Why It Hurts | Better Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Dismissing concerns | Signals arrogance | Acknowledge, then explain |
| Vague promises | "We will add experiments" | Specify what, where, and provide preliminary results |
| Arguing with reviewer's taste | Alienates the reviewer | Reframe objectively with evidence |
| Ignoring a concern | Reviewer assumes you can't address it | Address everything, even briefly |
| Overlong responses | Buries important points | Be concise, lead with key information |
| Changing the paper's claims | Suggests original claims were wrong | Clarify scope rather than retreating |
references/reviewer-guidelines.md to understand how reviewers evaluate papers — this helps you target responses to what matters most for scoring decisions