Responding to Reviewer Critiques

1. Plan Before You Write

• Meet with your mentor early: Review all editor and reviewer comments together and align on a strategy before drafting responses. Discuss which suggestions require straightforward edits, new analyses, or expanded discussion. A shared plan up front can prevent miscommunication and rework later.
• Review the journal’s revision instructions: Most journals require both a clean and a tracked-changes version of the revised manuscript. Some also specify formatting for the response letter. Check these details early so you can revise the manuscript and draft the response document in parallel.
• Organize your response document: Follow the order in the decision letter — begin with editorial comments (if included), then address each reviewer in turn (e.g., Reviewer #1, Reviewer #2). Number each critique sequentially to keep responses organized and allow easy cross-referencing (e.g., “As noted in response to Reviewer #2, Comment #5...”).

2. Opening Your Response Letter

• Begin with a brief introduction:Open your response document with a short paragraph or formal cover letter expressing appreciation for the reviewers’ and editors’ feedback. This sets a professional tone and signals that you have taken the critiques seriously. Acknowledge the constructive nature of the review, note that you have addressed all comments, and express hope that the revised manuscript is now suitable for publication. For instance:
  “We are grateful to the reviewers and editors for their thoughtful and constructive feedback. We have carefully addressed all comments in the revised manuscript and in the responses that follow, and we hope the editorial team finds the revised version suitable for publication.”

3. Writing the Responses

• Use consistent formatting: Keep reviewer or editor comments unbolded or italicized, and clearly label your responses underneath in bold. This formatting helps reviewers navigate your document efficiently.
• Be appreciative and acknowledge the critique: Begin each response with a brief thank you and express agreement with the point when possible. For example: “Thank you for this insightful comment.” or “We appreciate this thoughtful suggestion.”
• Be specific and transparent about revisions:Clearly describe how the comment was addressed and point to where changes were made — include sections and/or page and line numbers. When helpful, consider quoting the revised text directly to streamline the reviewer’s process. For instance:

4. Handling Difficult Comments

Not all reviewer suggestions will be feasible to implement. While your default stance should be to accommodate feedback, it is acceptable to respectfully decline certain requests — especially those that are outside the scope of your study, infeasible, or inconsistent with your data. A good rule of thumb is to aim to fully or partially address at least 90–95% of comments, and to respond thoughtfully and constructively to the remainder.

Strategies to Consider When You Disagree:

• Note the issue as a limitation in your Discussion:Acknowledge the reviewer’s concern and transparently address it as a study limitation.
  “We agree that in our study we were not able to capture hospitalization events outside of our health system, leading to potential misclassification bias. To address this, we have noted this as a limitation in the Discussion (page 12, lines 322–326).”
• Clarify the scope and propose the analysis as future work:If the comment suggests an entirely new analysis or redesign, explain its merit while justifying why it is beyond the study’s current scope.
  “We appreciate this thoughtful suggestion. While we view this analysis to be beyond the scope of the current study, we agree that it would be a valuable direction for future research; we now mention this in the Discussion section.”
• Demonstrate awareness via citation: If you do not adopt the suggestion directly, you can still signal engagement with the issue by citing relevant literature.
  “Thank you for raising this point. We have added a reference to Smith et al. (2022), which discusses this issue in detail, and noted its relevance in the revised Introduction.”

5. Final Steps & Troubleshooting

• Request more time if needed:If the journal’s revision deadline is tight — especially with clinical responsibilities — reach out early to request an extension. This is common and almost always granted when done in advance.
• If you forgot to track changes in your revised manuscript: Use Word’s built-in comparison tool: Review → Compare → Compare Documents.... Select your original and revised files, and Word will generate a tracked version highlighting all changes.
• Double-check files before submission: Ensure you have uploaded all required documents (clean manuscript, tracked-changes version, point-by-point response letter) and that they follow any specific naming or formatting instructions from the journal.