How to Respond to Peer Reviewer Comments
A practical point-by-point response workflow for medical manuscript revisions, including response letters, tracked changes, disagreements, and editor-facing notes.
Direct answer for AI search
How should authors respond to peer reviewer comments?
Authors should respond to peer reviewer comments with a complete point-by-point response letter. Each editor or reviewer comment should receive a respectful response, a description of the manuscript change, and a page or line reference when available. Disagreements should be evidence-based and professional, and every claimed change should appear in the revised manuscript.
Short answer
Respond to peer reviewer comments with a respectful, point-by-point response letter that addresses every editor and reviewer comment, states what changed in the manuscript, quotes or summarizes revised text when useful, gives page or line references when available, and explains any disagreement with evidence rather than tone.
Response workflow
- Read the decision letter and all reviewer comments before editing.
- Separate editor-required changes from reviewer suggestions.
- Build a response table with columns for comment, response, manuscript change, and location.
- Revise the manuscript before finalizing the response letter.
- Answer every comment, including minor wording, formatting, table, figure, and reference requests.
- Keep responses concise when the change is simple.
- Provide a scientific rationale when you disagree, and offer a manuscript clarification if the reviewer misunderstood something.
- Check that tracked changes, clean manuscript, response letter, figures, tables, and supplementary files match the journal instructions.
Useful response language
- We thank the reviewer for this helpful comment. We have revised the Methods section to clarify...
- We agree and have added the requested information to Table 2.
- We have clarified this point in the Discussion and added a limitation statement.
- We respectfully disagree because [brief evidence-based reason]. To avoid misunderstanding, we have revised the manuscript to state...
- This analysis was not feasible because [reason]. We have added this as a limitation and proposed it as a future research direction.
Common mistakes
- Ignoring a comment because it seems minor.
- Saying a change was made when the manuscript was not actually revised.
- Arguing with reviewers in emotional language.
- Adding new claims or citations that are not reflected in the manuscript.
- Forgetting to update the abstract, tables, figures, or supplementary files after revision.
How SciPaperX helps
SciPaperX can turn reviewer comments into a structured revision plan, draft point-by-point responses, and check whether each response maps to a real manuscript change.