Advanced Materials Response to Reviewers: How to Write a Rebuttal That Clears the Breakthrough Bar (2026)
How to write a point-by-point response to reviewers for Advanced Materials, where the question driving every revision is whether the work is a genuine breakthrough over the existing literature, not whether it is well characterized.
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What makes this journal worth targeting
- IF 26.8 puts Advanced Materials in a visible tier — citations from papers here carry real weight.
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When to look elsewhere
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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 Materials response to reviewers is an editor-led, point-by-point rebuttal whose real job is to prove the work is a genuine advance over the existing literature, because the journal screens hard for novelty and broad materials significance and its own guidelines state that disagreements over novelty or significance are not grounds for appeal.
Open with a short letter to the professional in-house handling editor, then for each change specify the exact page and line number plus the figure or scheme you cite, answer under Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2, and treat a "is this really new" question as a request for a benchmark against the best recent work plus a mechanism, not more characterization.
Start with the Advanced Materials submission readiness check before you resubmit, or work through this guide by hand. For broader cluster context, see the Advanced Materials journal overview.
What does an Advanced Materials response to reviewers require?
The Manusights Advanced Materials rebuttal scan. This guide tells you what the in-house handling editor and the two to three referees look for in an Advanced Materials rebuttal. The scan tells you whether YOUR response letter answers the only question that matters here, whether the work is a real advance over the literature, before you resubmit. In our pre-submission review work with Advanced Materials manuscripts we see the same revision patterns the referees flag at re-review. Your unpublished significance data stays yours: we never use your manuscript to train any model, and the file is deleted within 24 hours of the scan.
Three things make an Advanced Materials rebuttal different from a generic one:
- It is editor-led. A professional in-house handling editor, not a working academic, ran the selective editorial screen that let your paper survive, and that same editor now decides what the revision must demonstrate. The letter to the editor therefore matters as much as the per-reviewer replies.
- The bar is novelty and broad materials significance, not completeness of characterization.
The flagship of the Advanced Portfolio runs an editorial filter built to catch incremental work that is technically sound but does not move the field, and a large share of competent papers are turned away before review on that test alone.
- Novelty and significance are not appealable. The journal's own author guidelines state that differences in opinion regarding the novelty or significance of the reported findings are not considered grounds for appeal.
That third clause reshapes the whole rebuttal. The revision is your one chance to settle the significance question. If the referees still do not see the advance after re-review, there is no appeal route left to argue it.
How this guide was built
Read this before you submit a revision so you answer the significance question the way Advanced Materials referees actually weigh it. To produce it, we reviewed Advanced Materials' own author and editorial-policy documentation, checked it against SciRev community reports, and analyzed it against our own pre-submission reviews of Advanced Materials rebuttals. Every claim below traces to a primary source or our review corpus.
Element | What Advanced Materials expects | What referees flag at re-review |
|---|---|---|
The core question | Is this a genuine advance over the best recent literature? | "We have added more data" that does not address the advance |
New data | Benchmark vs state of the art plus mechanism for the property | More SEM, XRD, or TEM panels with no comparison |
Structure | Editor letter, then point-by-point under Reviewer 1, 2 | Free-form prose answering all comments together |
Specificity | Page and line number plus figure or scheme for every change | "We have updated the manuscript" with no location |
Tone | Substantive on significance, gracious on style | Defensive on a request to prove the advance |
Scope of claim | Generality the data actually support | Over-claiming a universal mechanism from one system |
Source: Advanced Materials author and editorial-policy documentation (Wiley), accessed June 2026.
The copyable Advanced Materials rebuttal template
Referees at Advanced Materials write detailed reports and the handling editor reads the revision letter closely, 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 (adma. [ID]). We are grateful to the reviewers for their detailed reports. The central question raised was whether [the material / the property] represents a genuine advance over [the closest prior work].
To address this directly we have (1) added a head-to-head benchmark against [best recent reference(s)] in new Figure [N], (2) added [DFT / in-situ / mechanistic] data that explains why the property arises (new Figure [N]), and (3) narrowed the generality claim to what the data support.
A point-by-point response follows; reviewer comments are in bold and our replies in plain text, with revised-manuscript page and line numbers and the specific figure or scheme given for every change.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewer 1
Comment 1.1: "It is not clear that this advance is significant
relative to existing materials."
Response: We agree this was not demonstrated clearly. We have added
a direct benchmark of [property] against [the three best recent
reports] in new Figure 4 and Table 1, showing a [X-fold / X%]
improvement under matched conditions. Changed text appears on
page 6, lines 11 to 19.
Comment 1.2: "The origin of the enhanced [property] is asserted,
not explained."
Response: We have added [DFT / spectroscopic] evidence that links
the [structural feature] to the [property] (new Figure 5b and
Supplementary Note 2). See page 9, lines 3 to 14.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewer 2
Comment 2.1: "The claim of general applicability is not supported."
Response: We agree. We have added two additional [compositions /
substrates] (new Figure S7) and revised the claim to apply to
[the bounded class the data support]. Revised text on page 11,
lines 5 to 12.
Comment 2.2: "Reproducibility of the synthesis is unclear."
Response: We have added batch-to-batch data (n = [N], new
Supplementary Table 4) and clarified the synthesis on page 14,
lines 1 to 9.
We believe the revised manuscript now demonstrates the advance over
the existing literature and we look forward to your decision.
Sincerely,
[Corresponding author, on behalf of all authors]The template carries the four tokens referees actually scan for: a letter to the editor that names the advance, a Reviewer 1 / 2 structure, explicit action language ("we have added", "we have benchmarked", "we have narrowed the claim"), and a page and line reference for every change. Note what the editor letter leads with: not a list of new figures, but the single sentence that says what the advance is and how the revision now proves it.
The page-and-line rule: cite the location of every change
State the exact page and line number for each manuscript revision, and name the specific figure, scheme, table, or supplementary file you changed. At Advanced Materials the advance lives in the benchmark figure, so a text-only pointer reads as a missing comparison.
The mechanics are simple but unforgiving:
- A referee who has to hunt for your new benchmark reads the silence as evasion. One who can click straight to page 6, lines 11 to 19, and see the head-to-head comparison 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 always name the new figure or scheme that carries the significance claim.
This is the single most-cited rebuttal failure across the Advanced Portfolio, and at a journal that decides on significance it is the difference between a benchmark the referee can verify and one they assume is not there.
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. Under single-anonymous review the referees and the in-house editor scan many of these letters, and a rebuttal where comment and reply blur together costs you the attention you need to make the significance case.
At Advanced Materials the layout has a second job that a generic rebuttal does not. Because the decision turns on a benchmark, the editor's eye should land on each figure call-out without effort. So bold the figure reference inside your plain-text reply every time you point to a comparison. A clean two-font or two-color layout where every claimed advance points to a named figure is what separates a rebuttal a referee can verify from one they quietly distrust.
Tone calibration: how to phrase the hard replies
The referees see your tone across every comment, and the editor weighs whether you engaged with the significance question or dodged it. The trap at Advanced Materials is treating a "this is not a real advance" comment as an insult to argue with, rather than as the one thing the revision exists to answer. Calibrate.
Bad (defensive or evasive) | Better (substantive and gracious) |
|---|---|
"The reviewer underestimates the novelty of our work." | "We did not make the advance explicit. We have added a direct benchmark against the three best recent reports (new Figure 4) showing a clear improvement, page 6, lines 11 to 19." |
"Our material is obviously better than prior work." | "We have quantified the comparison under matched conditions; the [property] exceeds the best prior report by [X], with the data in new Table 1." |
"We have added more characterization to strengthen the paper." | "We have added the mechanism the reviewer asked for: new DFT results (Figure 5b) link the [feature] to the [property], page 9, lines 3 to 14." |
"This generalizes to all systems of this class." | "We agree the original claim overreached; we have narrowed it to [the bounded class] the data support and added two systems as evidence, page 11, lines 5 to 12." |
"Reproducibility is standard and not an issue." | "We have added batch-to-batch data (n = [N], Supplementary Table 4) confirming the synthesis is reproducible." |
The reply pattern that clears revision
Treat every significance challenge as a request for proof: concede the over-claim, run the benchmark, point to the exact figure, and push back only on a request genuinely outside the paper's scope, with a reason and an alternative.
The Advanced Materials reviewer culture you are writing into
Who decides, and how fast
Advanced Materials is editor-led: a professional in-house editor, not an academic editor, runs a selective editorial screen up front and owns the decision afterward. The journal uses single-anonymous peer review and typically invites at least two referees, with the editor free to add a third.
SciRev community data (N = 20 reviews reported by authors) gives you the planning clock:
Metric | Reported value |
|---|---|
Referee reports per submission | about 2.4 |
First review round | near 1.2 months |
Immediate-rejection time | around 10 days |
Review rounds before a final decision | 1.7 on average |
Source: SciRev community reviews for Advanced Materials (N=20), accessed June 2026.
The implication of 1.7 rounds is blunt: the revision you are about to write is usually the round that decides the paper.
The significance filter and why appeal is closed
The defining feature is the significance filter. As the flagship of the Advanced Portfolio, the journal publishes work with novelty and broad reach across materials science, and it desk-rejects a large share of technically competent but incremental papers before review. The referees who do see your paper are asked, above all, whether it advances the literature.
That is why the appeal policy is so consequential. The guidelines draw a hard line:
- Appealable: a genuine misunderstanding of the science, or a concern about how the manuscript was handled.
- Not appealable: differences in opinion regarding the novelty or significance of the reported findings.
Read plainly, the rebuttal is your only venue to argue significance. If the referees still do not see the advance after re-review, the decision is effectively final.
What "major revision" means here
A major revision at Advanced Materials carries a specific weight. Wiley typically gives authors two to three months to return it, the revised manuscript goes back to the original referees, and a second-round decision often takes another four to eight weeks. The bar is not "address the comments." It is "demonstrate the advance the comments doubted," and the editor judges whether your rebuttal moved the significance case rather than whether it sounds polite or adds volume.
Where Advanced Materials sits among its peers
Calibration depends on knowing the neighbors. Its sister journal Advanced Functional Materials weights device-level functional performance most heavily, so a rebuttal there leans on a new device metric. ACS Nano and Nano Letters foreground nanoscience mechanism and quantitative rigor. Nature Materials applies a comparable significance bar but with academic editors and a heavier reviewer load.
Advanced Materials sits at the top of the Wiley materials family on a breadth-of-significance axis. The question is less "does the device work better" and more "does this change what the materials community can do." Pitch the rebuttal to that question, because a benchmark that beats one competing paper but does not establish broad significance still fails the screen the editor applied at submission.
Key Insight
At Advanced Materials, novelty and significance are explicitly not grounds for appeal. The revision is the only place you get to prove the advance over the literature, so the rebuttal must answer that question with a benchmark and a mechanism, not with more characterization.
What our Advanced Materials rebuttal reviews surface
In our pre-submission review work with Advanced Materials manuscripts, the rebuttals that stall in a second round or get rejected on revision share a small set of recurring weaknesses. Each maps to a specific, named failure pattern in this journal's editorial culture, and each is testable against your own draft response before you upload it.
Answering a "what is the breakthrough versus the literature" question with more characterization. This is the most common and most expensive pattern in our Advanced Materials pre-submission reviews. A referee writes that the advance over prior work is not clear, and the rebuttal responds with additional SEM, XRD, or TEM panels that describe the material more thoroughly but never benchmark it against the best recent reports.
At Advanced Materials, characterization establishes that the work is real, not that it is significant. The reply that moves the decision adds a head-to-head benchmark plus a mechanism that explains the property. Across our Advanced Materials rebuttal reviews, this mismatch between what the referee asked (prove the advance) and what the author delivered (prove the material exists) is the single strongest predictor of a rejection on revision.
Adding data without an updated, honest benchmark. A close cousin: the author runs the new experiment the referee requested but reports the result in isolation, with no side-by-side comparison to current state of the art and no acknowledgment of where the material still trails. In our Advanced Materials pre-submission reviews, an isolated new figure with no benchmark reads as defensive, and a benchmark that quietly omits the strongest competing paper reads as worse.
The fix is one honest comparison table. Place your results next to the best recent literature under matched conditions, including the metrics where you do not win. Referees trust an honest benchmark and distrust a flattering one.
Over-claiming generality the data do not support. Materials rebuttals routinely respond to a significance challenge by widening the claim, asserting that the mechanism or material class is universal when the evidence covers one system. In our pre-submission review work with Advanced Materials submissions, that over-broad claim invites a referee to ask for proof you cannot provide, which adds a round or sinks the paper.
The disciplined move runs the other way. Narrow the claim to the bounded class the results actually support, then add one or two systems as evidence, rather than asserting reach the sample size of systems cannot justify.
Inconsistent answers across the two referees. Because the editor reads both reports together, a rebuttal that frames the same statistical analysis or reproducibility concern one way for Reviewer 1 and another way for Reviewer 2 reads as evasive. In our Advanced Materials pre-submission reviews we routinely find a reproducibility or methods point raised by both referees and answered with two different justifications. Reconcile every overlapping comment to a single, consistent answer before submission.
Demonstrate the advance, benchmark honestly, bound the claim, and reconcile across referees. That four-part discipline is what separates an Advanced Materials rebuttal that clears revision from one that stalls into a second round or a rejection. Check your Advanced Materials point-by-point response for these patterns before you resubmit.
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When to comply and when to push back
Situation | Recommended approach at Advanced Materials |
|---|---|
Reviewer says the advance over prior work is not clear | Comply. Add a head-to-head benchmark against the best recent literature and cite the figure and table. |
Reviewer asks why the property arises | Comply. Add mechanistic evidence (DFT, in-situ, spectroscopy) and cite the page and line. |
Reviewer requests an experiment genuinely out of scope | Push back with a reason, add an alternative analysis, note the open question in the Discussion. |
Reviewer questions reproducibility or scale-up | Comply. Add batch-to-batch data and clarify the synthesis in Methods. |
Reviewer challenges an over-broad generality claim | Comply. Narrow the claim to what the data support; do not widen it to argue significance. |
Reviewer raises a point a co-author disputes | Engage substantively, defend with evidence, accept refinements. The editor weighs whether you addressed the advance. |
Source: Manusights pre-submission reviews of Advanced Materials-targeted resubmissions, 2025 cohort.
How much work an Advanced Materials rebuttal actually takes
Authors consistently underestimate the benchmark-and-mechanism 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 Materials review time guide.
Rebuttal task | Where the effort goes | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
Identifying the real significance challenge | Finding the one "is this new" concern behind the comments | A day of careful reading, not a skim |
Building the head-to-head benchmark | Comparing your result to the best recent literature, matched | Often the highest-value day of the whole revision |
Adding mechanism for the property | DFT, in-situ, or spectroscopic evidence of why it works | The bulk of the bench work, often several weeks |
Bounding the generality claim | Narrowing or supporting the reach you assert | Cheap in time, high in credibility |
Writing the point-by-point replies | One reply plus a figure and page-line reference per comment | Less than authors fear once the data exist |
Reconciling overlapping comments | Same answer for both referees on shared points | Skipped most often, and it shows |
Source: Manusights pre-submission reviews of Advanced Materials resubmissions, 2025 cohort, last updated June 7, 2026.
Honest friction: rejection on revision is real
A major-revision invitation at Advanced Materials is not a soft acceptance. The revised manuscript and your point-by-point response go back to the original referees, who re-assess whether the advance over the literature is now demonstrated. With an effective acceptance rate as low as 6% by some counts, the journal does not rubber-stamp revisions, and a paper can still end in rejection after re-review when the new data do not establish significance.
Most rejections at this stage trace to one cause: the author answered a "is this a real advance" question with more characterization instead of a benchmark and a mechanism. The second most common is an over-claimed generality the referees then ask the author to prove.
The appeal door stays shut here. Because the guidelines state that novelty and significance are not grounds for appeal, a rejection on those grounds is effectively final. The usual consolation is an offer to transfer to a sister Advanced-portfolio or other Wiley materials journal where the significance bar is lower.
Think twice before you resubmit if any of these are true:
- The response uses generic "we have added more data" language with no benchmark against current state of the art.
- A referee questioned the advance and you answered with characterization rather than a comparison and a mechanism.
- The rebuttal widens a generality claim the data do not support.
- The same reproducibility or statistics point from both referees got two different answers.
Fixing these before resubmission is what keeps a major revision from becoming an unappealable rejection.
Red flags an Advanced 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 benchmark. Any "we have strengthened the characterization" with no side-by-side comparison to the best recent literature reads as a dodge of the significance question.
- Characterization where an advance was requested. A referee asked whether the work is new and the reply only adds descriptive panels.
This is the single most common cause of a rejection on revision here.
- A flattering benchmark. A comparison table that omits the strongest competing paper, or hides the metric where you trail, reads worse than no table at all.
- A widened claim. Responding to a significance challenge by asserting universal applicability the data do not support invites a request for proof you cannot give.
- 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.
How does this guide go beyond the Advanced Materials author guidelines?
The official guidelines tell you to submit a point-by-point response, mark the revised manuscript, and address each comment. What they leave out is everything that decides the paper:
- The rebuttal exists primarily to prove the advance over the literature, not to close out comments.
- Novelty and significance are explicitly not grounds for appeal, so this revision is your only shot at the significance argument.
- A "is this new" comment is a request for a benchmark, not for more characterization.
- An honest comparison table beats a flattering one with the referees who decide your paper.
Those facts change how you write every reply. The patterns above come from our pre-submission reviews of Advanced Materials rebuttals, and they are testable against your own draft today, not theoretical concerns. Run a final Advanced Materials manuscript readiness check on the response letter to confirm every significance challenge is answered with a benchmark and a mechanism.
- Manusights pre-submission reviews of Advanced Materials-targeted manuscripts (2025 cohort)
Frequently asked questions
Usually evidence that the work is a genuine advance over the existing literature, not more characterization. Advanced Materials runs a high editorial screen for novelty and broad materials significance, and a major-revision request that questions the advance is asking you to demonstrate it, not to add another spectrum.
Open with a short letter to the professional in-house handling editor that states, in two or three sentences, how the revision now demonstrates the advance over the literature. Then list each comment in order under Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2, quote the reviewer text in full, state the exact change, and give the page and line number in the revised manuscript plus the specific figure, panel, scheme, or supplementary file.
For a major revision, usually yes. Community data on SciRev (N=20) reports about 2.4 referee reports per submission and an average of 1.7 review rounds, and the reports are detailed. When a reviewer questions whether the result is a real advance, the move that changes the decision is a head-to-head benchmark against the best recent literature plus a mechanism that explains the property, not another SEM or XRD panel. Adding characterization without an honest benchmark is the single most common reason a rebuttal stalls.
Yes. A major-revision invitation is not an acceptance. The revised manuscript and your point-by-point response go back to the original reviewers, who re-assess whether the advance over the literature is now demonstrated. With an acceptance rate near 6%, the journal does not rubber-stamp revisions, and a paper can be rejected on revision when the new data do not establish the significance, sometimes with an offer to transfer to a sister Advanced-portfolio or other Wiley materials journal.
Usually two, sometimes three. The journal uses single-anonymous peer review and typically invites at least two referees, and SciRev community data reports about 2.4 reports per submission. A professional in-house handling editor integrates the reports and decides what the revision must demonstrate, so the letter to the editor carries real weight alongside the per-reviewer replies. Keep any point raised by both reviewers answered the same way in both places.
Sources
- Advanced Materials author guidelines, Wiley Online Library (accessed June 2026)
- Advanced Portfolio editorial policies, Wiley (accessed June 2026)
- Advanced Portfolio reviewer guidelines, Wiley (accessed June 2026)
- Reviews for Advanced Materials, SciRev (accessed June 2026)
- Ten simple rules for writing a response to reviewers, William Stafford Noble, PLOS Computational Biology (accessed June 2026)
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