Response to Reviewers Letter Template

The pack is three documents and three sheets and one rule. The rule is that a numbered comment is not one request. Reviewers write in paragraphs, so comment 4 asks for a random intercept, then asks in its second sentence whether the counts are overdispersed, then mentions in a parenthetical that a figure is unreadable, then wonders about the aggregation window. That is four requests wearing one number, and a fifth arrives in the last clause.

So the unit here is the request. Every numbered comment is split into its separable asks and each one becomes a row. Each row then needs three fields a letter usually leaves vague: a disposition in three values rather than the word addressed, the change that satisfies it, and the section, page and line where that change now sits. Two joins run across the register after that. Where one edit answers more than one reviewer, it goes in the letter under each of them. Where two reviewers want opposite things, it goes to the editor.

Everything else in this category answers the reviewer's numbering, because the numbering is what is printed. In the worked example that draft answers all 24 comments and 33 of the 41 things they ask for, and five of the eight it drops come from the reviewer who recommended rejection. Open the pack in River and the split happens first, before a word of response. Or download the sheets and keep the register beside the grant reporting pack.