Reply to reviewers

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Writing rebuttal letters can be a difficult task. To ease your journey follow these steps:

• Read all Reviewer's comments at least twice. Make sure you understand what they really want.

• Paste all Reviewer's comments into a Word document, separating each comment in a paragraph. Then highlight:

The most positive comments each Reviewer gave to your work.  
Any action verb, that indicates what they asked you to do.  

• The reply to each comment should be clear and concise and has four parts. Ideally you should write the first two parts in the earliest draft.

(1) First you show that you understand the point raised by the Reviewer. 
(2) Then, you explain what you did to analyze the problem. 
(3) Continue explaining the key results/conclusions of the analysis. 
(4) Report page/line where you put the modifications. 

• If you added/modified a new figure to answer a particular comment, paste it after your reply. The same if you modified a sentence or paragraph. Reviewers are busy people. The less time you take from them, the better.

• Keep focused. Every day start by the rebuttal letter. Put whatever you can put. Then see what items are missing and focus on them. Only then go to the Manuscript and Supplementary Materials.

• Avoid over-editing the Manuscript and Supplementary Materials for things not related to a Reviewer's comment. That shows lacks of professionalism.