I just finished a rebuttal to reviewers’ comments about a paper I submitted to CHI 2010. I had a grand time — I laughed, I cried. I drafted replies, then slept on it. Etc etc.
If you’ve written a rebuttal before, you may be familiar with some of these techniques. I used these strategies for writing a clear rebuttal and dealing with the review process:
Filed under writing a clear rebuttal:
- Organize your rebuttal by issues related to the methodology, analysis, and design implications separately. I gave them section headers.
- Itemize your points and give your points titles.
- Then address each one next to its title. Stick to the facts and don’t apologize. You will make the following changes in the revision.
- Mention which reviewer(s) brought up each issue. This will make them feel good, and will show your attention to details.
- Address all points, even little minor ones. A typo in my paper was mentioned by several reviewers — I addressed it in the rebuttal.
- Avoid telling reviewers how stupid and pig-headed their comments were. (This is where you cry and sleep on it.) Instead tell them how much you love them. You might even tell them that twice.
Filed under dealing with the rebuttal process:
- Complain on Twitter. I found lots of comrades when I did this.
- Write a blog post. Last week several good ones were written (and got exposure, comments, etc.) by James Landay and Gene Golovchinsky.
- Draw a comic! I am actually in the process of drawing my second (ever) comic on what’s wrong with the academic review process. Stay tuned!**
**Isn’t it ironic that I had to write my rebuttal before I could dedicate time to illustrating what’s wrong with the process. However, the writing of the thing also gave me good fodder for the comic 
I’d love to hear your thoughts about what other strategies you employ in writing rebuttals (either similar or different from mine here)! Good luck to everyone who’s still writing!
5 Comments
Good suggestions all.
I would also add the following:
Some changes reviewers ask for may well be beyond the scope of the work, and may be contradictory (R1 wants of X, R2 more of Y). You should decide what makes sense given the work you *did*, not the work the reviewer *wanted* you to do.
Being defensive is not going to win reviewers over; being factual may.
Make sure reviewers know what the takeaway from your paper was (particularly if any of them expressed doubts). This is the elevator pitch for your paper, and you should have it nailed. Sometimes reviewers don’t read the paper as carefully as you’d like them to (after all, they may be reading lots of papers, and doing other things as well), so adding a bit of emphasis here may help alert them to what’s important about the work.
Give the meta-reviewer as much evidence as possible that you will make the appropriate changes. If reviewers asked for a particular analysis and you can squeeze it into the rebuttal, do it.
Very good additional points, Gene. Thanks!
And here’s the link to my comic: http://www.scribd.com/doc/22660693/Parallel-Lives
Many authors respond to negative reviews by trying to shoot down the criticisms, one by one.
Remember, the Program Committee are the ones who decide on acceptance, not the reviewers, who merely act as advisors to the PC. The PC doesn’t need to assure that every criticism is met, it needs to understand *the argument for why the paper should be accepted*. I can’t emphasize this enough.
Many reviews/rebuttals discuss flaws in the paper and whether/how they should be repaired, but lack a good argument for accepting (or rejecting, as the case may be) the paper.
So, in a rebuttal, help the PC out by giving them the argument for accepting the paper. If the reviewers made the argument, then point it out. If the reviewers missed the point of the paper, spell out the argument for accepting the paper yourself. Examples: This paper introduces a genuinely new and important idea. It solves a problem that nobody else can solve. It gives people a new way to think about an old problem, etc.
If there are flaws in the paper criticized by the reviewers, by all means repair or rebut them as necessary. If the criticisms are well taken, cop to it. But say why the repaired paper deserves acceptance, or argue that the remaining flaws are inessential to the main point.
Great piece thank you Brynn. It’s fascinating that there is a kind of emergent (and mostly unwritten) etiquette for responding to reviewers comments, and it’s different for journal paper, conference paper and (especially) grant applications.
I blogged about a rejected paper recently, see
http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/2010/09/darn-conference-paper-soundly-rejected.html
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[...] In light of the CHI 2010 paper reviews that were due last week, I created a comic strip about the academic research, review, and publishing process. I previously noted that this was one of my tips for “dealing with the rebuttal process!” [...]