thedixitjain ICDM Author Response
Prepare for the ICDM review phase under its defining reality: ICDM's tradition is no author rebuttal. Whether the current edition opens a response window is 待核实 (the ICDM 2025 call mentioned responses becoming part of the submission), so this skill has two modes — the default "there is no rebuttal" plan, and the contingency reply if a window exists. Confirm the current Research Track call before assuming either.
Default mode: pre-answer everything at submission
Because you may never get to reply, the submitted PDF and its cited anonymized artifact must answer the questions a reviewer would otherwise raise. Do this before the deadline.
- Baseline fairness: state the tuning budget you gave baselines; pre-empt "you under-tuned the competitor."
- Variance: report standard deviations over seeded runs; pre-empt "is this just noise?"
- Leakage: state the time-respecting or edge-disjoint split; pre-empt "your split leaks."
- Scale: show the cost curve and hardware; pre-empt "scalable is asserted, not shown."
- Discovery validity: tie findings to known-truth injections; pre-empt "this is an artifact."
A weakness you notice yourself is a weakness to fix in the paper, not to defer to a rebuttal that may not come.
Contingency mode: if a response window opens
If the edition does provide a response, treat it as a scarce, high-value channel:
| Reviewer point | Response move |
|---|---|
| Factual misreading | Correct it with a pointer to the exact section/table already in the PDF |
| Missing-baseline ask | Report the result if you already have it; do not promise future work |
| Clarity complaint | Acknowledge and state the one-line clarification (fixable in camera-ready) |
| Fundamental gap | Concede briefly; do not oversell — honesty reads better than bluster |
Response skeleton (only if a window exists; keep it tight):
R1: [concern] -> [one-sentence answer + exact pointer to existing evidence]
R2: [concern] -> [answer] (report only results you already have)
R3: [concern] -> [concede if it is a real gap]
Rule: reference evidence already in the submitted PDF/artifact; introduce nothing that
would break triple-blind anonymity or that you cannot substantiate.
Keep any response anonymity-safe
- The Research Track is triple-blind; a response, if it exists, must not reveal author identity, institution, or a de-anonymizing link.
- Do not smuggle in new non-anonymized material or an external identifying URL.
What not to do
- Do not plan the paper assuming a rebuttal will rescue a known weakness.
- Do not, if a window exists, argue combatively or restate the paper; answer the specific point.
- Do not promise experiments "in the final version" as a substitute for evidence reviewers can see now.
Vignette: the weakness that never got a second chance
A team knew their leakage guard was easy to misread but assumed they could explain it in a rebuttal. ICDM offered none; two reviewers flagged possible leakage and the paper was rejected on a doubt the authors could have removed with one sentence in the submitted PDF. The lesson: at ICDM, the rebuttal happens before submission — in the writing. The next cycle they stated the split explicitly in the experimental setup and the concern never arose.
Output format
[Rebuttal exists?] no (default) / yes (verify on current call)
[Pre-answered in PDF] baselines / variance / leakage / scale / validity - list gaps
[If window exists] per-reviewer reply drafted: yes / N-A
[Anonymity] response reveals no identity: pass / N-A
[Pre-submission fixes] <questions to answer in the paper before the deadline>
Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → ICDM-Skills/skills/icdm-author-response/SKILL.md