I blogged about a rejected paper recently, see
http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/2010/09/darn-conference-paper-soundly-rejected.html

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.

[...] 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!” [...]

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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.