brycewang-stanford R&R Response & Rebuttal (smj-rebuttal)
When to trigger
- You received a Major/Minor Revision and have revised (or are revising) the manuscript
- You need to write the response-to-reviewers letter
- You must decide how to respond to a comment you disagree with
- The manuscript changes are in progress but the response document is not yet written
Revise the manuscript first. A response letter written before the actual edits exist will over-promise and drift from the paper.
The response-letter structure
- Opening to the editor. Thank the action editor and reviewers; state that you have revised substantially; summarize the 2–4 most important changes (lead with how you addressed the gating concern — usually endogeneity or contribution).
- Point-by-point response. For every comment, in order, per reviewer:
- Quote or paraphrase the comment (verbatim is safest).
- State your response and exactly what changed.
- Point to the location: "see revised Section 4.2, pp. 18–20, and new Table 5."
- Reviewer-by-reviewer grouping with clear headers (Reviewer 1, 2, …, Editor).
- Summary of changes (optional) and a clean revised manuscript plus, where helpful, a tracked-changes version.
Responding well
- Address every comment — none silently dropped. Even a comment you reject gets a respectful, evidence-based reply.
- Show, don't assert. "We now address endogeneity with an instrument (new Section 4.3) and report the first-stage F (Table 4)" beats "we believe endogeneity is not a concern."
- Lead each reply with the action taken, then the rationale.
- Disagree respectfully and with evidence. When pushing back, acknowledge the concern, present the counter-evidence or theoretical reason, and offer a compromise (e.g., a robustness check or appendix note) where possible.
- Reconcile conflicting reviewers explicitly; if two reviewers want opposite things, explain your choice and flag it for the editor.
- Match tone to the editor's priorities from the decision letter; the gating concern gets the most thorough treatment.
SMJ-specific emphases in the response
- If the gating concern was endogeneity, your strongest reply is a design improvement (instrument, shock, matching, selection model, or partial-identification bounds) with the identification evidence shown — not more controls or rhetoric. This aligns with SMJ's own standard (Bettis, Gambardella, Helfat & Mitchell, 2014, SMJ 35: 949–953): a good-faith effort to address endogeneity, and no spec-mining for better p-values (SMJ disapproves of data snooping / p-hacking). If causation remains imperfect, reframe the claim honestly — SMJ accepts this.
- If the gating concern was contribution, sharpen the theoretical advance and its strategy stakes (loop back to
smj-contribution-framing); do not merely add findings. - Keep the manuscript's framing consistent with the letter — reviewers re-read the intro and discussion to check that promised changes actually landed.
Checklist
- The manuscript is actually revised before the letter is finalized
- Every comment from every reviewer and the editor has a response
- Each reply states the concrete change and its location (section/page/table)
- The gating concern is addressed first and most thoroughly
- Push-backs are respectful and evidence-based, with a compromise offered where possible
- Conflicting reviewer requests are reconciled and flagged to the editor
- A clean and (if useful) tracked-changes manuscript accompany the letter
- Tone is professional and grateful throughout
Anti-patterns
- Silently ignoring or partially answering a comment
- Asserting a concern is unfounded without new evidence (especially on endogeneity)
- Adding more control variables in place of a real identification fix the reviewer asked for
- Defensive or combative tone toward reviewers or the editor
- Promising changes in the letter that are not actually in the revised manuscript
- Letting the intro/discussion framing contradict the changes claimed in the letter
- Treating a "contribution" critique as solvable by piling on more empirical results
Output format
【Decision being answered】major / minor
【Gating concern + how addressed】endogeneity → [new design] / contribution → [sharpened claim]
【Comments answered】all (n) / outstanding: [...]
【Push-backs】[comment → evidence-based reply + compromise]
【Reviewer conflicts reconciled】yes / flagged to editor
【Manuscript versions】clean + tracked
【Tone】grateful, evidence-led
【Next step】re-preflight via smj-submission, then resubmit → smj-review-process for the next round
Templates & resources
../../resources/official-source-map.md— SMJ endogeneity / p-hacking policy (Bettis et al. 2014) and Co-Editor roster../../resources/external_tools.md— packages for added identification / robustness analyses