Advanced Functional Materials Response to Reviewers: How to Write a Rebuttal That Clears Revision (2026)
How to write a point-by-point response to reviewers for Advanced Functional Materials, where a major revision usually means a new performance benchmark and a mechanism, not extra characterization.
Readiness scan
Before you submit to Advanced Functional Materials, pressure-test the manuscript.
Run the Free Readiness Scan to catch the issues most likely to stop the paper before peer review.
Advanced Functional Materials at a glance
Key metrics to place the journal before deciding whether it fits your manuscript and career goals.
What makes this journal worth targeting
- IF 19.0 puts Advanced Functional Materials in a visible tier — citations from papers here carry real weight.
- Scope specificity matters more than impact factor for most manuscript decisions.
- Acceptance rate of ~~12-18% means fit determines most outcomes.
When to look elsewhere
- When your paper sits at the edge of the journal's stated scope — borderline fit rarely improves after submission.
- If timeline matters: Advanced Functional Materials takes ~~21 day. A faster-turnaround journal may suit a grant or job deadline better.
- If OA is required: gold OA costs ~$5,200 USD. Check institutional agreements before submitting.
How to use this page well
These pages work best when they behave like tools, not essays. Use the quick structure first, then apply it to the exact journal and manuscript situation.
Question | What to do |
|---|---|
Use this page for | Building a point-by-point response that is easy for reviewers and editors to trust. |
Start with | State the reviewer concern clearly, then pair each response with the exact evidence or revision. |
Common mistake | Sounding defensive or abstract instead of specific about what changed. |
Best next step | Turn the response into a visible checklist or matrix before you finalize the letter. |
Quick answer: An Advanced Functional Materials response to reviewers is an editor-led, point-by-point rebuttal where a major revision usually means a new functional benchmark and a mechanism, not more characterization. Open with a short letter to the professional handling editor, then for each change specify the exact page and line number plus the figure you cite. Answer under Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2, and treat a reviewer's "what is the advance" question as a request for new device or performance data.
Start with the Advanced Functional Materials rebuttal readiness check before you resubmit, or work through this guide by hand. For broader cluster context, see the Advanced Functional Materials journal overview.
What does an Advanced Functional Materials response to reviewers require?
The Manusights Advanced Functional Materials rebuttal scan. This guide tells you what the in-house handling editor and the two reviewers look for in an Advanced Functional Materials rebuttal. The scan tells you whether YOUR response letter passes that check before you upload it. In our pre-submission review work with Advanced Functional Materials manuscripts, the rebuttals that stall in a second round answer a functional-advance question with extra characterization instead of a new benchmark; the patterns below are the same ones reviewers flag at re-review. We do not train AI on your manuscript and delete it within 24 hours.
Three things make an Advanced Functional Materials rebuttal different from a generic one.
First, it is editor-led by Wiley's Advanced Portfolio editorial process. The handling editor integrates the reports and decides what the revision must demonstrate.
Second, the journal screens for a functional advance, not material novelty alone. A reviewer's central question is usually whether your material does something better than the current state of the art and why.
Third, a major revision at Advanced Functional Materials usually means new functional or device data plus mechanism, not a wording pass or another micrograph. Our methodology for this guide: we read Advanced Functional Materials' Wiley author guidelines and Advanced-portfolio editorial policies, checked them against SciRev community reports, and compared them to our own pre-submission reviews of Advanced Functional Materials rebuttals.
Element | What Advanced Functional Materials expects | What reviewers flag at re-review |
|---|---|---|
Structure | Editor letter, then point-by-point under Reviewer 1 and 2 | Free-form prose answering all comments together |
New data | New device/performance benchmark and mechanism for major revisions | "We added more characterization" with no new function |
Benchmarking | Comparison table updated to the last 1 to 2 years of literature | A table that stops at older, convenient references |
Specificity | Page and line number plus figure or panel for every change | "We have revised the manuscript" with no location |
Mechanism | DFT, in-situ, or structure-property evidence for the advance | Mechanism left to speculation after a major-revision ask |
Tone | Substantive on the science, gracious on style | Defensive on every minor figure-quality suggestion |
Source: Advanced Functional Materials Wiley author guidelines and Advanced-portfolio editorial policies, accessed June 2026.
The copyable Advanced Functional Materials rebuttal template
The in-house handling editor and the two reviewers read your rebuttal alongside each other's reports, so a clean, scannable structure is doing real work. Copy this skeleton, then replace the bracketed text with your own changes. Keep the reviewer text and your reply in two distinct fonts or colors.
Dear Editor,
Thank you for the opportunity to revise our manuscript the manuscript title
(adfm.[ID]). We are grateful to both reviewers for their detailed
reports. In response, we have added [new device measurement / new
benchmark], added [DFT / in-situ / spectroscopic] evidence for the
mechanism, and updated the performance comparison table to include
[recent 2025 to 2026 references]. A point-by-point response follows;
reviewer comments are in bold and our replies in plain text, with
revised-manuscript page and line numbers given for every change.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewer 1
Comment 1.1: "The functional advance over existing materials is not
demonstrated. Performance should be benchmarked against the current
state of the art."
Response: We agree. We have added a device measurement (new Figure 4b)
and a benchmark table (new Table 1) comparing our [key metric] against
the best literature values from 2025 to 2026. The revised comparison
appears on page 9, lines 4 to 18, and Supplementary Table 2.
Comment 1.2: "The mechanism behind the reported performance is
speculative."
Response: We have added [DFT calculations / in-situ XRD] supporting
the proposed structure-property relationship (new Figure 5, Methods on
page 14, lines 6 to 12). The mechanism is now established rather than
inferred.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewer 2
Comment 2.1: "Stability and reproducibility data are missing."
Response: We have added cycling/aging data over [N cycles / N hours]
for [M independent samples] (new Figure 6, page 16, lines 2 to 9, and
Supplementary Figure 8).
Comment 2.2: "The XPS spectra show inconsistent baseline handling."
Response: We have re-processed the spectra with consistent baseline
correction and replaced the figure (revised Figure 2c, page 6, lines
20 to 24).
We believe the revised manuscript now demonstrates the functional
advance, benchmarks it against the current literature, and explains
the mechanism, and we look forward to your decision.
Sincerely,
[Corresponding author, on behalf of all authors]The template carries the four tokens that reviewers actually scan for: a letter to the editor, a Reviewer 1 / Reviewer 2 structure, explicit action language ("we have added", "we have benchmarked", "we have re-processed"), and a page and line reference for every change.
The page-and-line rule: cite the location of every change
State the exact page and line number for each manuscript revision, and reference the specific figure, panel, table, or supplementary file you changed. This is the single most-cited rebuttal failure at Advanced Functional Materials.
A reviewer who has to hunt for your new device curve reads it as evasion. A reviewer who can click straight to page 9, lines 4 to 18, and see the updated benchmark table finishes faster and re-reviews more favorably.
Never write "we have addressed this in the manuscript" without a location. Use the line numbers from the revised file, not the original, and name the new figure or supplementary panel explicitly, because at Advanced Functional Materials most of the load-bearing evidence lives in figures and the SI rather than the text.
Reviewer-text vs author-response typography
Make the reviewer's words and your reply visually distinct. Put each reviewer comment in bold or a colored text box, and keep your response in plain regular text directly beneath it.
The handling editor and reviewers scan many revision letters. A rebuttal where comment and reply blur together costs you attention you need on the main question: whether the functional advance is now demonstrated.
The distinction is not cosmetic at Advanced Functional Materials specifically. Reviewers are cross-checking your reply against the new figures, and a two-font or two-color layout lets them jump from each comment to the matching panel without re-reading your prose.
Tone calibration: how to phrase the hard replies
Both reviewers see your tone across every comment, and the handling editor reads the whole exchange to decide whether you took the functional-advance bar seriously. A defensive reply to Reviewer 1 is visible to the editor weighing Reviewer 2's verdict. Calibrate.
Bad (defensive or vague) | Better (substantive and gracious) |
|---|---|
"The reviewer underestimates the novelty of our material." | "We agree the advance was not benchmarked. We have added Table 1 comparing our [metric] against the best 2025 to 2026 literature; our value exceeds the prior best by [X], page 9." |
"A device measurement is outside the scope of this paper." | "We agree device-level data would strengthen the claim. We have added a [device] measurement (new Figure 4b, page 11) demonstrating the functional advance at the system level." |
"We have added more characterization as requested." | "We have added the mechanism evidence the reviewer asked for: in-situ XRD linking structure to the performance gain (new Figure 5, page 14, lines 6 to 12)." |
"Our performance is the best ever reported." | "We have benchmarked our result against current state of the art (Table 1); the advance is [X-fold] over the best 2026 value, with the mechanism established in Figure 5." |
"The figure quality is acceptable as submitted." | "We have re-acquired the microscopy at higher resolution and corrected the XPS baselines (revised Figures 2 and 3, page 6); the panels are now publication quality." |
The pattern that works: concede where the reviewer is right, run the functional or mechanism experiment, point to the exact figure, and push back only on a request that is genuinely out of scope, with a reason and an alternative.
The Advanced Functional Materials reviewer culture you are writing into
Advanced Functional Materials is editor-led within Wiley's Advanced Portfolio. A professional handling editor owns the decision and decides what a revision must demonstrate.
The handling editor reads for functional advance, not just materials novelty. That is why the rebuttal should show device or system relevance, mechanism, benchmarking against current literature, and stability or reproducibility.
SciRev's author-reported sample is useful planning context, but it is not an official acceptance-rate or desk-reject source. Its reports show that AFM revisions often involve about two review reports, with some variation by manuscript and round.
SciRev community data (N = 24 author-reported reviews) puts the first review round near 6 weeks with roughly a third of submissions immediately rejected, which sets your planning clock for the revision you are about to write.
The defining feature of an Advanced Functional Materials revision is the functional-advance bar. The journal does not publish a new material because it is structurally novel; it publishes a material that does something better than the current state of the art, with the gain benchmarked and the mechanism explained.
So when a reviewer asks "what is the functional advance," they are not asking for more characterization. They are asking for a measurement, ideally device-level, that shows the function.
They are also asking for a comparison table against the best recent literature and a mechanism, by DFT, in-situ characterization, or structure-property analysis, that explains why your material wins. A major revision is the journal telling you the advance is plausible but not yet demonstrated.
The practical consequence: reviews here are detailed and frequently demand additional experiments or mechanistic studies. Incomplete responses to reviewer concerns are the most common cause of an extended timeline, because skipping or hand-waving a point triggers a second full review round rather than a quick editorial accept. The bar is real functional work, benchmarked precisely, returned reasonably fast on a fast Wiley clock.
How this compares to the rest of the field matters for calibration. A response to reviewers at its sister journal Advanced Materials faces an even broader-impact bar across all of materials science.
A rebuttal at ACS Nano leans harder on nanoscale mechanism, and a rebuttal at Small weights the size-dependent functional story. Advanced Functional Materials sits in a specific niche: the function is the protagonist, the device or system measurement is the evidence, and the mechanism is the price of admission.
An author who treats the rebuttal as a chance to add more SEM images is writing for the wrong journal. The editors want the function demonstrated, not the material re-described.
Key Insight
At Advanced Functional Materials, "show the functional advance" means a new benchmark and a mechanism, not more characterization. The fastest path to a second round is answering a device-performance question with another spectrum.
What our Advanced Functional Materials rebuttal reviews surface
In our pre-submission review work with Advanced Functional Materials submissions, the rebuttals that stall in a second revision round share a small set of recurring weaknesses. These are the same ones reviewers flag at re-review, and each maps to the journal's functional-advance culture. In our analysis of Advanced Functional Materials rebuttals, each weakness below is testable against your own draft response before you upload it.
More characterization where the reviewer asked for a functional benchmark. The most common and most expensive pattern in our Advanced Functional Materials pre-submission reviews is a rebuttal that answers a request to demonstrate the functional advance with another round of characterization, another XRD pattern, another figure of SEM images, when the reviewer asked for a device measurement benchmarked against the current literature. Across our Advanced Functional Materials rebuttal reviews, this mismatch between a functional question and a characterization answer is the single strongest predictor of a third round.
Adding data without addressing the mechanism question. When a reviewer flags the mechanism as speculative, a rebuttal that adds more performance results but no DFT, in-situ, or structure-property evidence does not move the decision. In our Advanced Functional Materials pre-submission reviews we routinely find authors who treat "explain why this works" as "show that it works again." The journal expects the mechanism behind the function to be established, not re-demonstrated; the statistical analysis of a performance gain is not a substitute for explaining its origin.
Over-claiming in the rebuttal. A reply that asserts the result is "the best ever reported" without an updated benchmark table reads as marketing, not evidence.
In our pre-submission review work with Advanced Functional Materials manuscripts, over-claiming in the abstract or rebuttal, paired with a comparison table that stops at older references, consistently draws a re-review comment asking for the current state of the art. State the advance precisely, benchmark it against the last one to two years, and let the number carry the claim.
Generic acknowledgment without a figure or line number. A rebuttal that says "we have revised the manuscript accordingly" forces the reviewer to hunt for the change across the main text and a long supplementary file. In our Advanced Functional Materials pre-submission reviews, responses that omit the location of each new figure, panel, or control measurement consistently add a round. Every reply needs the page and line number of the revised file plus the specific figure or SI panel.
Run the functional experiment, establish the mechanism, benchmark honestly, and cite every location. That four-part discipline is what separates an Advanced Functional Materials rebuttal that clears one revision round from one that stalls into a second or third. Check your Advanced Functional Materials point-by-point response for these patterns before you submit.
Readiness check
Run the scan while Advanced Functional Materials's requirements are in front of you.
See how this manuscript scores against Advanced Functional Materials's requirements before you submit.
When to comply and when to push back
Situation | Recommended approach at Advanced Functional Materials |
|---|---|
Reviewer asks you to benchmark the functional advance against current literature | Comply. Add a comparison table updated to the last 1 to 2 years; cite the page and figure. |
Reviewer asks for a device or system-level measurement | Comply where feasible. This is the highest-leverage fix; the function is the point of the journal. |
Reviewer flags the mechanism as speculative | Comply. Add DFT, in-situ, or structure-property evidence; do not add more performance data instead. |
Reviewer requests an experiment that is genuinely out of scope | Push back with a reason, add an alternative analysis, note the open question in the Discussion. |
Reviewer flags figure or spectra quality (baselines, resolution) | Comply. Re-acquire or re-process; poor figures are a real red flag here. |
Reviewer questions reproducibility or stability | Comply. Add cycling, aging, or multi-sample data for the relevant function. |
Source: Manusights pre-submission reviews of Advanced Functional Materials-targeted resubmissions, 2025 cohort.
How much work an Advanced Functional Materials rebuttal actually takes
Authors consistently underestimate the new-functional-data effort and overestimate the writing effort. This breakdown is about workload, not the journal's decision clock; for the end-to-end decision schedule, see the Advanced Functional Materials review time guide.
Rebuttal task | Where the effort goes | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
Reading and clustering reviewer reports | Finding the one functional-advance concern behind the comments | A day of careful reading, not a skim |
Running the new device or mechanism experiment | The actual bar for a major revision | The bulk of the work, often several weeks |
Updating the benchmark table | Re-checking the last 1 to 2 years of literature | A focused day, skipped more often than it should be |
Writing the point-by-point replies | One reply plus a page, line, and figure reference per comment | Less than authors fear once the data exist |
Reconciling overlapping comments | Same answer for any point both reviewers raised | Skipped most often, and it shows |
Source: Manusights pre-submission reviews of Advanced Functional Materials resubmissions, 2025 cohort, last updated June 7, 2026.
Honest friction: rejection on revision is real
An Advanced Functional Materials major-revision invitation is not a soft acceptance. The revised manuscript and your point-by-point response can be returned to reviewers, who re-assess whether the functional advance is now demonstrated and benchmarked.
The paper can still end in rejection after re-review if the new data do not establish the advance over the current literature. SciRev community reports show a first-round duration around several weeks in the author-reported sample, but they should be treated as community timing signals rather than official journal metrics.
In our review work, most rejections at this stage trace to one cause: the author answered a functional-advance question with more characterization. The second most common is leaving the mechanism speculative after a reviewer flagged it.
Think twice before you resubmit if any of these are true.
The response uses generic "we have addressed this" language with no page, line, or figure number. A reviewer asked you to demonstrate the functional advance and you answered with another characterization figure. The mechanism is still speculative after a reviewer flagged it.
Also pause if the benchmark table still stops at older references, or if the rebuttal over-claims the result without an honest comparison to the current state of the art. Fixing these before resubmission is what keeps a second round from becoming a rejection, sometimes softened with an offer to transfer to a sister Advanced-portfolio or Wiley materials journal.
Red flags an Advanced Functional Materials reviewer spots in seconds
Before you upload, scan your own rebuttal for the patterns that draw an immediate re-review comment. Each is a specific, checkable thing in your draft, not a vague quality dimension.
- A reply with no location. Any "we have revised the manuscript" with no page, line, and figure number reads as evasion the moment a reviewer cannot find the change.
- Characterization where a device was requested. The reviewer asked you to demonstrate the functional advance and the reply only adds another spectrum or micrograph.
This is the single most common cause of a third round.
- A speculative mechanism after a flag. The reviewer flagged the mechanism and the reply adds more performance data instead of DFT, in-situ, or structure-property evidence.
- A stale benchmark table. A comparison that ignores the last one to two years of literature signals you did not update to the current state of the art.
- An over-claiming opener. "Our material is the best ever reported" with no honest benchmark, in a letter the in-house editor reads in full, reads worse than any data gap.
How does this guide go beyond the Advanced Functional Materials author guidelines?
The official Wiley guidelines tell you to submit a point-by-point response and to demonstrate a functional advance. They do not tell you how an AFM-style functional-advance question usually translates inside the rebuttal letter.
In practice, "show the functional advance" usually means a benchmarked device measurement and a mechanism rather than more characterization. It also means an incomplete reply can trigger another full review cycle, and over-claiming without an updated benchmark can draw an immediate re-review comment.
Those facts change how you write every reply. The patterns above come from our pre-submission reviews of Advanced Functional Materials rebuttals, and they are testable against your own draft today, not theoretical concerns.
- Manusights pre-submission reviews of Advanced Functional Materials-targeted manuscripts (2025 cohort)
Frequently asked questions
Usually a new functional measurement, not more characterization. Reviewers at Advanced Functional Materials evaluate functional advance, device-level performance, mechanism, and reproducibility. A major-revision request that asks for the functional advance to be demonstrated is asking for a new device or a new benchmark against current literature, not another spectrum.
Open with a short letter to the handling editor summarizing the new functional data and mechanism work you added. Then list each comment in order under Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2, quote the reviewer text, state the exact change, and give the page and line number in the revised manuscript plus the specific figure, panel, or supplementary file.
For a major revision, usually yes. Reviews are detailed and frequently demand additional experiments or mechanistic studies. The journal screens for a functional advance that is visible, benchmarked against current state of the art, and mechanistically explained. If a reviewer questions whether the advance is real, mechanism evidence or a device measurement can move the decision; another SEM image usually does not.
Yes. A major-revision invitation is not an acceptance. The revised manuscript and point-by-point response can go back to reviewers, who re-assess whether the functional advance is now demonstrated and benchmarked. The paper can still be rejected on revision when the new data do not establish the advance over the current literature.
SciRev community data reports about two review reports per AFM submission in its author-reported sample, with variation by manuscript and round. Treat that as planning context, not official policy. The handling editor integrates the reports and decides what the revision must demonstrate, so keep any point raised by more than one reviewer answered consistently.
Sources
- Advanced Functional Materials author guidelines, Wiley (accessed June 2026)
- Advanced Portfolio editorial policies, Wiley (accessed June 2026)
- Reviews for Advanced Functional Materials, SciRev (accessed June 2026)
- Ten simple rules for writing a response to reviewers, William Stafford Noble, PLOS Computational Biology (accessed June 2026)
- How to write a peer review and a response to reviewers, Nature Computational Science (accessed June 2026)
Final step
Submitting to Advanced Functional Materials?
Run the Free Readiness Scan to see score, top issues, and journal-fit signals before you submit.
Target journal carried over: Advanced Functional Materials
Anthropic Privacy Partner. Zero-retention manuscript processing.
Where to go next
Same journal, next question
- Advanced Functional Materials Submission Guide: Requirements & Editorial Fit
- How to Avoid Desk Rejection at Advanced Functional Materials
- Advanced Functional Materials Review Time: What to Expect From Submission to Decision
- Major Revision at Advanced Functional Materials: Next Steps
- Is Your Paper Ready for Advanced Functional Materials? Function Over Novelty
- Advanced Functional Materials 'Under Review': What Each Status Means
Supporting reads
Conversion step
Submitting to Advanced Functional Materials?
Anthropic Privacy Partner. Zero-retention manuscript processing.