Response to reviewers editing service

What we edit in your response to reviewers

A revision decision usually means two documents: your response letter and your revised manuscript. Editors and reviewers read them side by side, so we edit both as one package. Our response to reviewers editing covers:

• Language and clarity. Grammar, word choice and sentence flow in your replies and in the revised sections of the paper, so each point is easy to understand on first reading.
• Tone. Polite, factual and professional, including where you disagree with a reviewer. Springer Nature reminds authors that if the paper goes to a second round of review, the reviewers will see the letter too. An Elsevier executive publisher quoted in its tips for responding to reviewers advises writing the response so it can be forwarded to the reviewer.
• Structure. A short overview of the main revisions, then each reviewer comment reproduced in full with your reply directly below it, and comments and replies clearly told apart. This is the layout that Nature Portfolio and Springer Nature describe.
• Completeness. We flag any editor or reviewer comment that has no reply, and any reply that says a point could not be addressed without giving a reason. You write the missing text, and we edit it.
• Consistency with your tracked changes. We check that every reply that says something was changed points to a real change in the revised file, at the place you name. Elsevier's tips call forgetting to update the paper one of the biggest mistakes authors make.
• Formatting to journal requirements. Changes marked the way the journal asks (tracked changes, highlighting or coloured text), a clean copy where one is required, and anonymised files for double-anonymised review, as Taylor & Francis advises.

If your paper was rejected and you are thinking about an appeal, Taylor & Francis notes that a successful appeal needs strong evidence or new data or information, so the substance must come from you.

What we never do

• Draft your response letter, or compose replies to reviewer comments on your behalf.
• Add data, analyses, results, experiments, references or new claims, or change your findings or interpretation.
• Decide which reviewer comments to accept or contest. That is your scientific judgement.
• Correspond with reviewers, handling editors or journal staff, or try to influence the review in any way.
• Reword text to get past similarity or AI-detection software.
• Promise acceptance. Editors and reviewers decide.

These limits are deliberate. COPE describes systematic manipulation of the publication process as including repeated dishonest attempts to inappropriately influence the independent assessment of work by peers, to inappropriately attribute authorship, or to publish fabricated or plagiarised research. We only edit the words you have written.

How reviewer response editing works

• 1. Free assessment. Send the decision letter, the reviewer reports, your draft response and your revised manuscript, with the journal's revision deadline. We tell you honestly what editing would help.
• 2. Written quote. A custom quote based on word count, field and deadline, with the turnaround agreed in the quote. If the journal's deadline looks too tight, Springer Nature advises telling the editor as early as possible.
• 3. Editing. An editor matched to your field edits the response and the revised paper in tracked changes, with comments where a reply is missing, unclear or does not match the revised text.
• 4. Your review. You accept or reject every change, write any missing replies, and approve the final files.
• 5. Submission and next rounds. You submit, or we upload with your authorisation (see below). If the journal asks for another round, our clients get free revision and resubmission support until publication. That is support, not a promise of publication.

What to send us

• The decision letter and every reviewer report, exactly as you received them.
• Your draft point-by-point response, ideally in Word. LaTeX and PDF are also fine.
• The revised manuscript with tracked changes or highlights, plus a clean copy if the journal wants one.
• The journal's revision instructions or author guidelines, and any revised figures, tables or supplementary files.
• Your deadline, and whether you want us to upload the revision for you.

Your files are handled confidentially (see our privacy policy), and we sign a non-disclosure agreement on request.

Authorised upload to the journal system

By default, you submit the revision yourself, and we can guide you through the journal's submission system step by step. If you explicitly authorise us in writing, we can upload the revision for you. We upload only the files you have approved, such as the final response letter, the revised manuscript, the clean copy and any updated supplementary files, and we do not change them at upload. Any text the system asks for, such as a note to the editor, must be text you have written and approved. Under ICMJE guidance, the corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal, so queries from the journal come to you. Our journal submission support page explains guided and authorised submission in more detail.

Is it ethical to get your response to reviewers edited?

Yes, when the help is editing and the content is yours. ICMJE lists writing assistance, technical editing, language editing and proofreading among the activities that do not on their own qualify someone for authorship, and says such contributors may be acknowledged. COPE likewise defines authorship by a substantial contribution to the work and accountability for it, and notes that acknowledgements can record contributions that fall short of authorship. You and your co-authors remain responsible for every reply and every change. If your journal or institution asks you to acknowledge editing help, credit the On Time Publication Editorial Team. Wiley's advice for dealing with reviewer comments sums up the approach: answer politely, answer completely and answer with evidence. Our job is to help your own answers come across that way.

Who this service is for

• Authors with a major or minor revision decision who want their own response letter checked before resubmission.
• Researchers writing in English as a second language who want their replies to read clearly and politely.
• Early-career researchers and PhD students answering reviewers for the first time.

We work online with researchers in the USA, the UK and Australia, in Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC, and in Jordan, across most academic disciplines. We are an online service based in the UK, run by a UK registered company, with no published address and no office or university affiliation in the Gulf or Jordan. We reply quickly by email or WhatsApp, are available most hours and cover Gulf and Jordan business hours, and Arabic support is available if you prefer to discuss your project in Arabic. Our editors are the On Time Publication Editorial Team: qualified researchers and subject-specialist editors with publishing experience. See also our pages for Saudi Arabia and the GCC and Jordan, and how pricing works.

Writing the response yourself? Our free guide on how to respond to reviewer comments explains the structure and tone step by step. If you also need full language editing of the paper, see manuscript editing and proofreading.

Sources

Publisher and publication-ethics guidance, checked on 27 October 2026. Always follow your own journal's revision instructions, which take priority.

• Springer Nature: Revising and responding (author tutorial)
• Nature Portfolio: Writing a response to the reviewers’ comments (PDF)
• Elsevier: 3 top tips for responding to reviewer comments on your manuscript
• Wiley: How to deal with reviewer comments
• Taylor & Francis Author Services: How to respond to reviewer comments
• Taylor & Francis Author Services: Peer review appeals and complaints from authors
• ICMJE: Defining the role of authors and contributors
• COPE: Authorship (discussion document)
• COPE: Systematic manipulation of the publication process