---
name: reviewer-response-workflow
description: Prepare a point-by-point response to journal or academic reviewer comments and reconcile each response with actual revisions.
---

# Reviewer response workflow

Produce a response that enables an editor or reviewer to find and assess the actual changes. Separate proposed work, completed changes, and disagreements supported by the manuscript and available evidence.

## Organize and decide

Identify the editor's decision, deadline and instructions, submitted manuscript version, complete reviewer comments, and current revision files. Preserve reviewer numbering and split compound comments into distinct actionable issues without changing their meaning. Maintain a ledger linking each concern to its priority, proposed action, evidence or analysis needed, owner, status, and manuscript location. Respect applicable confidentiality requirements for manuscripts and reviews when choosing tools or sharing material.

Check whether each request is feasible and scientifically appropriate. Address valid concerns by changing the analysis, reporting, interpretation, or manuscript as needed. If a requested experiment or analysis cannot be performed, explain the limitation and consider a narrower claim or defensible alternative. Where a request is mistaken or incompatible with the study, respond respectfully with a specific explanation and supporting evidence. Do not invent data, analyses, reviewer approval, or reasons for author decisions.

## Draft and reconcile

For each comment, acknowledge the concern, state the action actually taken or explain the reason for disagreement, and cite the revised section and stable location. Quote a short revised passage if useful and permitted, but do not use a proposed passage as proof it has been inserted. For analyses, identify methods, results, and limitations supported by the actual work; explicitly mark calculations or checks that remain pending.

Apply requested or otherwise authorized edits to the relevant manuscript and check dependent statements in the abstract, conclusions, figures, tables, and supplement. Maintain attribution and existing contribution boundaries. Verify page and line references against the exact submission version, since edits and compilation can change them. If a change requires author judgment or unavailable evidence, flag it in the ledger instead of silently resolving it.

## Deliver

Return an editable response letter, the revised manuscript when requested, and a concise list of unresolved or disputed comments and checks. Before calling the package ready, compare each response with the corresponding actual file, confirm all comments are addressed, and verify the journal's current submission requirements. Sending or submitting the response is a separate external action requiring authorization.