To respond to reviewer comments, write a point-by-point letter that quotes each comment, gives your answer, and says what you changed and where. The revised manuscript, with changes marked, goes along with it. The editor should be able to check any reply in under a minute. After that it is only care and the right tone.
Replying can wait a little. First get clear on the editor’s decision and sort the comments. Then come the letter layout with a template, worked examples of difficult replies, and the checks before you resubmit. Last reviewed September 2026.
What do minor revision, major revision and reject-and-resubmit mean?
Read the editor’s letter before the reviews. In the editor’s summary you will see which comments the editor cares about most, and the decision shows how much risk is there for your paper.
- Minor revision. The paper is nearly there. The editor may accept it without sending it to the reviewers again. Do all the changes asked, quickly and exactly as asked.
- Major revision. Here the editor feels the paper is publishable if you answer the concerns properly. Usually it goes back to the same reviewers. For papers that finally get accepted in indexed journals, this is the most common decision.
- Reject and resubmit (or “reject with encouragement to resubmit”). Here the journal feels one revision round is not enough for the changes needed. Still, the journal is ready to look at a largely new version, as a new submission. New reviewers may get it this time.
- Reject. This journal will not look at the paper again. Use the reviews to improve it, and then send it somewhere else. Sometimes the paper comes back with no reviews at all. For that case read our desk rejection note.
Put the deadline in your calendar the same day the letter comes. Time given depends on the journal and the decision type. Say your new experiments or fieldwork need more weeks. Then write to the editorial office well before the deadline, suggest a new date and give the reason in one line.
How should you read and sort reviewer comments?
Read the reviews one time and then keep them aside for a day. On the first reading nearly everyone takes harsh comments personally. Second time, sit with a table and copy each comment into it. Where a reviewer has written one long paragraph, break it into separate points and number them like R1.1, R1.2, R2.1 and so on. After that, put every point into one of the types in this table.
| Type of comment | Example | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Must-fix | “The regression assumptions are not reported.” | Do the full change. In the reply, say exactly what you added and in which place. |
| Clarification | “It is unclear how the sample was drawn.” | Mostly the reviewer misread because your wording allowed it. So rewrite the passage, even if technically the information was already there. |
| Reasonable but costly | “A second dataset would strengthen the findings.” | Do it if you can. If not, give the reason and offer a smaller change, like a sensitivity check, a limitation or a softer claim. |
| Out of scope | “The authors should also study rural respondents.” | Rural respondents may be a fair idea, but the question of this paper is different. Thank them anyway, and after a two-line explanation you can put it under future work. |
| Mistaken | “The authors did not control for age.” | Correct it politely and give the page and line where you did it. Then think why the reviewer missed it, and make that part easier to find. |
| Language and presentation | “The English needs improvement.” | Get the whole paper edited and mention that in the reply. Fixing only the sentences they quoted is not enough. |
Two habits are useful here. One, assume that the reviewer read carefully and still got it wrong, because your text allowed it. Mostly it is true, and it gives a better revision. Two, sit with your guide and co-authors and discuss about the sorted table before anybody starts rewriting. Then everyone agrees which requests you accept and which you decline.
How do you structure a response letter?
Editors and reviewers keep the response letter open next to the manuscript while they read. A clear layout saves their time, and a reader whose time you saved is usually kinder. Follow this order.
- Opening paragraph to the editor. In one or two sentences, thank the editor and the reviewers. Then list the main changes in three to five bullet points, for example new analysis, sections moved or text cut.
- Response to Reviewer 1. Quote every comment in full, in italics or inside a shaded box. Under it write your reply in plain text, and after that the change and where it is.
- Response to Reviewer 2, and so on, in the same format.
- Other changes. Some changes you made on your own, say a typo fixed in a table or one reference updated. Mention those also here, because editors don’t like to find surprises.
A template you can adapt
Dear Dr [Editor’s surname],
Thank you for the opportunity to revise our manuscript “[Title]” (Manuscript ID [number]). The reviewers read it very carefully and we thank them. The main changes were these.
- [Change 1, for example: added a sensitivity analysis using an alternative measure of X (Section 4.3).]
- [Change 2]
- [Change 3]
Our point-by-point responses are given below. Reviewer comments are in italics. All page and line numbers we give are from the revised manuscript with tracked changes.
Reviewer 1
Comment 1.1: [quote the comment in full]
Response: [Your reply, in two to five sentences.]
Change: [Give page and line numbers for the change. Or if you changed nothing, write “No change. Please see the explanation above.”]
…
Yours sincerely,
[Corresponding author, on behalf of all authors]
Keep replies short. A reply longer than its change mostly means you are defending more than revising. A small new paragraph you can paste in the letter itself, then reviewer need not search for it. Use the same plain and polite tone that you used in your cover letter.
How do you reply to comments you disagree with?
Yes, you are allowed to disagree. Sometimes reviewers are wrong, and editors expect you to point it out when that happens. The trouble is disagreeing with no reasons, or a reply that fights the reviewer and forgets the evidence, and editors don’t accept that kind of reply. In most cases the wording in the table below works well.
| Situation | Wording that works |
|---|---|
| Accepting a change | “We agree with this point and have revised the paragraph (page 6, lines 12–20).” |
| Clarifying a misreading | “We have rewritten this passage so that the sampling procedure is clearer (page 4, lines 3–11).” |
| Adding analysis | “As suggested, we ran the model with firm size as a control. The main coefficient is still significant (new Table 5, page 11).” |
| Declining, with reasons | “We considered this suggestion carefully. Because the objective of the study is X, adding Y would change the research question. We now state this boundary in the limitations (page 18, lines 2–7).” |
| When reviewers disagree | “Reviewer 1 suggested A and Reviewer 3 suggested B. We followed A because … and have noted B as an alternative (page 9).” |
| Admitting an error | “We thank the reviewer for spotting this. The value in Table 2 was a transcription error and it has been corrected. The conclusions do not change.” |
Worked example: a reviewer who misread the method
Reviewer 2, comment 3: “The authors have not addressed common method bias, which is a serious concern with self-reported data.”
Weak reply: “We already addressed this in the paper. Please read Section 3.4.”
Better reply: “Thank you. We did run Harman’s single-factor test (the first factor explained 28% of variance). But we agree that the discussion was brief and easy to miss. We have moved it into a separate subsection, added a marker-variable test, and discussed the remaining limitation (Section 3.5, page 9, lines 4–22).”
In the better reply you are still correct. You only accept that the text left room for a misreading, so you fix that and add something new also. When the second round comes, it is this kind of reply that the reviewer marks as “addressed”.
Worked example: a request you cannot meet
Reviewer 1, comment 5: “Longitudinal data would be needed to support causal claims.”
Reply: “We accept that with a cross-sectional design like ours, causality cannot be established. Collecting longitudinal data is not possible within this study. So we have removed causal language from the whole paper (for example, ‘leads to’ is now ‘is associated with’, pages 2, 12 and 17). We have also added this as the first limitation (page 18, lines 1–6).”
The reviewer was really worried about overclaiming. This reply goes straight at that, and you never had to pretend that a new study is possible.
What should you check before resubmitting?
Most of the second rounds comes from small misses, and not from big disagreements. Keep the final files open and go through this list one by one.
- Each comment from each reviewer, and from the editor also, has its own numbered reply. Any comment hiding inside a long paragraph got pulled out with its own number.
- Wherever you wrote “we have added” or “we have revised”, the change is really there in the final file, at the page and line you gave.
- After the very last edit you went once more through the line numbers, because they move every time you edit.
- If any numbers changed, the abstract, tables, figures and conclusion all show the new numbers.
- Each new reference is real and correctly cited, and it supports the sentence you put it against.
- The tracked-changes file and the clean file have the same text.
- All co-authors and your guide have approved the manuscript and the response, both.
- No sarcasm or “as clearly stated” is left in the response, and not one line talks about the reviewer’s competence.
Resubmit in the journal’s system, from the corresponding author’s account. Upload the response letter, the tracked-changes manuscript and the clean manuscript in the way the system asks. Then you wait again. When a revision goes back to the reviewers, it usually takes some weeks to a few months. Our publication timeline guide has realistic ranges stage by stage.
If you want a specialist to go through the revision with you, our reviewer response support does that.
Want a specialist to help with this in your own work? Responding to Reviewer Comments: a free first consultation, then a written scope and fixed quote.
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FAQ
Questions scholars ask
How long should a response letter be?
Only as long as the comments need. For a major revision with three reviewers, 5–15 pages is common, mostly because every comment is quoted in full. Your reply to each one should be a few sentences only.
Should I address the reviewer as “Dear Reviewer” in each reply?
No need. The letter is addressed to the editor, and each reviewer just gets a heading. Thank a reviewer one time, at the start of their section, not before every comment. Repeated thanks start looking like filler.
A reviewer asked me to cite their own papers. What should I do?
If those papers are relevant and they improve your paper, cite them. When they are not relevant, one polite line saying they are outside the paper’s scope is enough. Some reviewers keep pushing too much. That you may mention to the editor in confidence, since COPE’s guidance calls coercive citation requests inappropriate.
Can I submit the revised paper to a different journal instead?
Withdrawing is allowed. After a revise decision, though, it is usually a poor trade, since the new journal starts you from zero and many times raises the same concerns again. Only when the changes asked would turn it into a different study altogether is withdrawing worth it.
Can I use an AI tool to draft replies to reviewers?
Check what your journal’s policy page says about AI before you open any tool. Many publishers are allowing help with language, though every claim in the reply is still your responsibility. Many also don’t allow uploading confidential review material to outside tools. Whatever tool you take help from, the reply must describe what you actually did, and you should be ready to defend it.
