How to Write Good Responses to Reviews of Journal Papers

The rule of thumb is to save reviewers’ and editor’s time. Ideally, you should provide sufficient details and arguments so that they can make decision based on your replies ONLY, rather than referring to your original and revised manuscripts.

1. First, give a Revision Summary to list the major changes that you have made according to the review comments.

2. Second, give a Detailed Replies to Review Comments to answer every comment in the order appearing in the review.

3. Give details of the revision and the location of modifications, such as “We revise at the third line, second paragraph of Section 2, as follows …” rather than simply writing “We have revised according to the comment/suggestion.”

4. Judge whether the comment could be a common question from readers. If so, you have to revise the manuscript accordingly and indicate the changes you have made in Reponses, rather than only replying to the reviewers in Responses.