How to Write a Response to Reviewers Letter

A response to reviewers letter (also called a point-by-point response, response document, or rebuttal letter) is the document authors submit alongside a revised manuscript, addressing every comment raised by reviewers and the editor and explaining exactly what changed in response. It is the deliverable of the revise-and-resubmit stage — distinct from an appeal letter, which contests an outright rejection rather than responds to a revision invitation. This guide covers the standard structure, tone, how to handle multiple reviewers with conflicting requests, and a worked example excerpt.

What this letter is (and isn’t)

If an editor has invited you to revise and resubmit — see CASRAI’s guide to what a revise and resubmit decision actually means and how the process runs end to end — the response to reviewers letter is the document that accompanies your revised manuscript back to the editorial office. Its job is narrow but essential: show the editor and reviewers, comment by comment, that every concern was read, taken seriously, and either addressed in the text or explained.

This is a different document from an appeal letter. An appeal follows an actual rejection and asks an editor to reverse that decision, typically on procedural grounds; see CASRAI’s guide on how to write an appeal letter to a journal editor for that scenario specifically. A response to reviewers letter, by contrast, follows an invitation to revise — the manuscript has not been rejected, and the task is to satisfy the concerns raised, not to argue that a closed decision was wrong. It’s also different from the reviewer’s own comments: for what reviewers actually write and how those comments are typically phrased, see CASRAI’s library of peer review feedback examples and reviewer comments to author, with worked examples. This guide is written from the author’s side: how to respond to those comments, not how to write them.

The standard point-by-point structure

Response letters vary somewhat by journal and field, but the widely cited practical framework from W.S. Noble’s “Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Response to Reviewers” (PLOS Computational Biology, 2017) captures conventions that show up across most STEM and biomedical journals, and the underlying logic holds in social-science and humanities fields too, even where format expectations differ slightly. The core unit repeats for every comment raised:

Quote the reviewer’s comment verbatim. Copy the original comment in full (often set off with quotation marks, italics, or a distinct color/indent) rather than paraphrasing it. This lets the editor and reviewer verify at a glance that you engaged with what was actually written, not a softened version of it.
Respond directly underneath. State plainly what you did: agreed and revised, partially addressed, or respectfully declined and why. Avoid burying the answer in a long preamble — editors and reviewers are reading dozens of these letters and want the disposition of each point immediately clear.
Cite the specific manuscript change. Point to exactly where the revision appears — page number, section heading, paragraph, or line number if the journal uses a line-numbered revised manuscript (many require one specifically for this purpose). “We have added a sentence clarifying the exclusion criteria (Methods, p. 6, lines 142–145)” is far more useful to a reviewer doing a second-round check than “We have clarified this in the Methods.”

Two structural conventions worth following: number every comment (matching the reviewer’s own numbering if they used one, or imposing your own numbering if they wrote unstructured prose), and use consistent typography — for example, reviewer text in italics or a shaded block, author response in plain text — so the letter is easy to scan. Some journals supply a template or explicitly request a particular format (a two-column table is common in some fields); always check the decision letter and journal instructions for authors before choosing a layout, since a required format that isn’t followed can itself delay the next round.

Open the letter with a short cover paragraph: thank the editor and reviewers for their time, briefly summarize the nature of the revisions at a high level, and note if anything outside the requested scope also changed (for example, an error caught during revision). Close with a short statement confirming the revised manuscript is ready for further consideration. The point-by-point responses go in between.

Tone: professional and non-defensive, even in disagreement

Reviewers are unpaid volunteers, and editors are reading the response letter partly as a signal of how the authors will behave as collaborators if the manuscript is accepted. A few conventions matter more than they might seem to:

Never argue with a comment you plan to ignore — explain it. If a reviewer has misunderstood something, the instinct is to say they’re wrong. A more effective response identifies where the manuscript itself created the ambiguity (“we recognize the original wording in the Introduction was unclear on this point”) and shows the fix, rather than framing the exchange as the reviewer’s error.
When you genuinely disagree and won’t make the change, still do the work. The strongest version of a respectful decline runs the analysis or check the reviewer asked for, reports the result in the response letter, and then explains why it doesn’t belong in the manuscript itself — rather than simply asserting the request is unnecessary. This shows engagement rather than dismissal, and it gives the editor something concrete to evaluate.
Avoid characterizing the reviewer. Language like “the reviewer failed to notice” or “as any reader would understand” reads as adversarial. Neutral phrasing (“Reviewer 2 raises a valid concern about X; we have addressed this by…”) keeps the exchange focused on the manuscript, not the person.
Don’t over-apologize or under-explain. A response letter is not a confession; it’s a technical accounting of what changed and why. Brief acknowledgment of a valid point is appropriate; extended apology is not and can read as padding.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) publishes general guidance for authors, reviewers, and editors on handling disagreements and conduct concerns during peer review; if a specific comment raises something beyond an ordinary content disagreement — a reviewer request that seems out of scope, or a conduct concern — that is a matter to raise with the handling editor directly rather than litigate inside the response letter itself.

Multiple reviewers with conflicting requests

Manuscripts commonly go to two or three reviewers, and it is routine for their comments to conflict — one may ask you to shorten the discussion section while another asks you to expand the same section with additional context. A few approaches handle this without the letter reading as evasive:

Organize by reviewer, not by merged topic. Use clear subheadings (“Response to Reviewer 1,” “Response to Reviewer 2”) so each reviewer can find and check their own points quickly, even if the underlying manuscript change addresses more than one reviewer’s comment at once.
Cross-reference when comments overlap or conflict. If Reviewer 2’s point 3 is answered by the same change made in response to Reviewer 1’s point 5, say so explicitly (“as noted in our response to Reviewer 1, comment 5, we have…”) rather than duplicating the explanation or, worse, leaving Reviewer 2’s comment looking unanswered.
Name the conflict and explain your resolution. When two reviewers want opposite things, don’t silently pick one side. State plainly: “Reviewer 1 requested a more concise discussion section, while Reviewer 3 requested additional context on X; we have retained the added context requested by Reviewer 3 but tightened the surrounding prose elsewhere to control overall length.” This shows both reviewers you registered their competing requests rather than ignoring one.
Escalate genuine impasses to the editor, not the reviewers. If a conflict can’t be reconciled by a reasonable compromise, it is appropriate to flag this directly to the editor in the cover paragraph or a separate note, since the editor is the one with authority to weigh reviewer input against each other and make a final call.

Worked example excerpt

The exchange below is an illustrative composite constructed to demonstrate the structure and tone described above — it is not drawn from a real manuscript, journal, or reviewer, and should not be read as an account of an actual submission.

Reviewer 2, Comment 4:
“The authors claim their sample is representative of the broader patient population, but no comparison to census or registry data is provided to support this. Either provide such a comparison or soften the claim.”

Response:
We thank the reviewer for this comment. We agree the original wording overstated what our sample supports. We have removed the representativeness claim from the Discussion and replaced it with a more precise statement of the sample’s demographic composition, and we have added a new limitation noting that generalizability beyond the recruiting sites was not formally assessed. See Discussion, p. 11, lines 238–244 (revised text), and the new limitation statement, p. 13, lines 301–305.

Reviewer 1, Comment 2:
“Section 3.2 is too long and repeats material already covered in the Introduction. Please condense.”

Response:
We have shortened Section 3.2 by approximately one-third, removing the restated background material the reviewer identified and retaining only the analysis-specific content not already covered in the Introduction (see p. 7–8, lines 156–189, revised). We note this is somewhat in tension with Reviewer 3’s Comment 1 requesting additional methodological detail in the same section; we have addressed that request by moving the added detail to a new Supplementary Methods section rather than expanding the main text, which we believe satisfies both reviewers’ concerns without further lengthening Section 3.2.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a response to reviewers letter be?

There’s no fixed length — it should be as long as it takes to address every comment specifically. Letters responding to a handful of minor comments might run one or two pages; letters responding to two or three reviewers with substantive methodological concerns can run considerably longer. Length driven by genuinely addressing each point is normal; length driven by padding or repetition is not.

Do I need to respond to every single comment, even trivial ones?

Yes. Leaving any comment unaddressed, even a minor typo flag, risks the impression that the revision was incomplete, and reviewers checking a second-round submission will often look specifically for the comments they raised. A one-line “Corrected, thank you” is sufficient for trivial points — the requirement is completeness of coverage, not depth on every item.

What if I can’t make a requested change within the revision deadline?

Contact the handling editor before the deadline rather than submitting late or incomplete. Editors regularly grant extensions for legitimate reasons (additional data collection, access to a resource, co-author availability); an unexplained late or partial resubmission is handled far less favorably than the same delay flagged in advance.

Should the response letter and the revised manuscript be submitted as separate files?

Follow the journal’s submission system instructions exactly — most manuscript-tracking platforms have a dedicated upload slot for the response-to-reviewers document, separate from the revised manuscript file and from any marked-up/tracked-changes version. Submitting the response letter in the wrong slot, or omitting a tracked-changes version when one is requested, is a common and avoidable cause of delay at the editorial-office check stage.

Is a response to reviewers letter the same as an appeal letter?

No. A response to reviewers letter follows a revise-and-resubmit invitation and works within that process; an appeal letter follows a rejection and asks the editor to reverse it. See CASRAI’s appeal letter guide for that separate scenario.