Frontiers in Immunology Response to Reviewers: How to Earn Every Endorsement in the Forum (2026)
How to write a point-by-point response to reviewers for Frontiers in Immunology, where review is a live two-phase forum, acceptance turns on validity not impact, and an unresolved gating or control question is enough for a reviewer to withhold their endorsement.
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Frontiers in Immunology 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 5.9 puts Frontiers in Immunology 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 ~~40% 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: Frontiers in Immunology takes ~~80 days. A faster-turnaround journal may suit a grant or job deadline better.
- If open access is required by your funder, verify the journal's OA 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: A Frontiers in Immunology response to reviewers runs inside a two-phase collaborative review forum, not as a single uploaded rebuttal file. Each reviewer first files an independent standardized report (about 10 days after accepting), then the editor opens the interactive review and you reply comment by comment in the live forum.
Acceptance turns on validity, not impact: the paper must be endorsed by a majority of the assigned, non-withdrawn reviewers, the endorsing reviewers' names are printed on the published article, and the immunology gates that decide it are antibody validation, flow cytometry gating, controls, and in vivo support where claimed.
Give the page and line reference from the revised file for every change so each reviewer can confirm it without scrolling. Start with the Frontiers in Immunology rebuttal readiness check before you reply in the forum, or work through this guide by hand. For broader cluster context, see the Frontiers in Immunology journal overview.
What does a Frontiers in Immunology response to reviewers require?
The Manusights Frontiers in Immunology rebuttal scan. This guide spells out what the handling editor and the assigned reviewers look for in a Frontiers in Immunology forum response. The scan tells you whether YOUR replies close every structured review question before the editor checks whether each reviewer can endorse. In our pre-submission review work with Frontiers in Immunology manuscripts, the patterns below are precisely the ones reviewers withhold endorsement over. We never feed your uploaded immunology manuscript or its figure data into AI training, and the file is purged within 24 hours of the scan.
Four features set a Frontiers in Immunology rebuttal apart from a generic one:
- Review is collaborative and interactive. After reviewers file their independent reports, the editor opens a forum where you and the reviewers exchange comments in near-real time. Each reply is a turn in a live conversation, not a sealed letter.
- The acceptance bar is soundness, not novelty. Frontiers does not reject on perceived impact and publishes no rejection rate.
A paragraph on why your cytokine result matters changes nothing; a clean demonstration that your gating and controls are correct changes everything.
- The paper needs a majority of the assigned, non-withdrawn reviewers to endorse it. The names of those who do endorse are printed on your published article.
- Reviewers grade you against a standardized, article-type-specific questionnaire.
For immunology, that questionnaire surfaces field gates such as antibody validation and flow cytometry gating, so an unanswered structured item is a concrete, citable reason a reviewer can decline to endorse.
How we built this guide
We reviewed Frontiers' own collaborative-review and peer-review guidelines, checked them against the Frontiers in Immunology editor guidelines, then compared both against our own pre-submission reviews of Frontiers in Immunology rebuttals. Every claim below traces to a primary source we checked or to our review corpus.
Use the guide to pressure-test your forum replies against these immunology-specific gates before you submit the revision and post in the interactive review.
One commercial note worth keeping in view: Frontiers in Immunology is fully gold open access, the official journal of the International Union of Immunological Societies, and charges a CHF 3,150 APC for an Original Research or Review article, invoiced only at acceptance. That sunk cost is a direct reason to clear the forum on the first interactive round rather than let a reviewer drift toward withdrawing.
Element | What Frontiers in Immunology expects | What reviewers flag in the forum |
|---|---|---|
Venue | Replies posted inside the interactive review forum | A rebuttal mailed as a standalone file with no dialogue |
Acceptance basis | Validity: antibody validation, gating, controls, stats | Defending impact or novelty when the bar is soundness |
Endorsement | Resolve every reviewer so each can endorse | Leaving one reviewer's gating or control question open |
Structured questions | Answer each immunology item on the questionnaire | Free-form prose that skips a flagged questionnaire item |
Specificity | Page and line number for every manuscript change | "We have revised the text" with no location |
Tone | Constructive, signed-quality dialogue | Defensive, since endorsing reviewer names are printed |
Source: Frontiers collaborative-review and Frontiers in Immunology editor guidelines, accessed June 2026.
The copyable Frontiers in Immunology forum-response template
Each forum reply has to read on its own. A reviewer scanning comment 2.1 about your isotype control should never have to scroll up to comment 1.2 about gating to follow you.
Copy this skeleton, post one block per reviewer comment under the matching thread, and swap the bracketed text for your own changes. Quote the reviewer first, then answer, with the manuscript location attached to every change.
To the Handling Editor and Reviewers,
Thank you for the detailed reports on our manuscript the manuscript title
([Manuscript ID]). We have revised the manuscript and respond to
each comment below in the review forum. Reviewer comments are quoted
in bold; our replies follow in plain text, with revised-manuscript
page and line numbers given for every change.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewer 1
Comment 1.1: "The flow cytometry gating strategy is not shown, so
the reported population frequencies cannot be evaluated."
Response: We agree. We have added the full gating strategy with
fluorescence-minus-one controls as new Supplementary Figure 1 and
described the hierarchy in Methods, page 6, lines 9 to 18.
Comment 1.2: "The anti-CD8 antibody clone and validation are not
reported."
Response: We have added the clone, supplier, catalogue and lot
numbers, and the validation reference to a new Key Resources Table.
See Methods, page 7, lines 2 to 11.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewer 2
Comment 2.1: "The in vivo conclusion rests on a single cohort with
no isotype control."
Response: We have repeated the adoptive-transfer experiment with an
isotype-matched control group and n = [N] mice per arm, and added
the statistical test to the figure legend. See Figure 4, page 13,
lines 4 to 12.
We have resolved each point and welcome any further clarification
in the forum.
Sincerely,
[Corresponding author, on behalf of all authors]The skeleton carries the four things a Frontiers in Immunology reviewer scans for when they decide whether they can endorse:
- An opening addressed to the editor and reviewers, since the whole exchange is shared.
- A per-reviewer thread structure (Reviewer 1, Reviewer 2) that mirrors the forum.
- Explicit action language tied to the immunology fix: "we have added the gating strategy", "we have repeated the adoptive transfer with an isotype control".
- A page and line reference for every change, so the reviewer can confirm the new FMO panel or Key Resources Table without hunting.
Post each block under the comment it answers, so a reviewer can endorse item by item as their immunology-rigor questions close.
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, supplementary figure, or table you changed. This is the single most-cited rebuttal failure at Frontiers in Immunology and across the collaborative-review model.
In the interactive forum a reviewer decides, comment by comment, whether they can endorse. A reviewer who has to dig for your new gating panel reads the omission as evasion and may leave the thread unresolved. A reviewer who can jump straight to page 6, lines 9 to 18, and find the gating strategy with the FMO controls finishes faster and clicks endorse.
A bare "we have addressed this in the manuscript" with no coordinates is the version that costs you. Two immunology-specific habits matter here:
- Cite line numbers from the revised file, not the original.
- Flag when a change lives in a Supplementary figure rather than the main text, which is the common home for gating hierarchies, FMO panels, and antibody-validation data.
Reviewer-text vs author-response typography
Keep the reviewer's words and your reply visually separate inside each forum post. Set each reviewer comment in bold or a quoted block, then write your answer in plain regular text directly under it.
In a threaded immunology discussion the editor and every assigned reviewer skim many short posts. A reply where the quoted comment and your gating or control answer run together costs you the attention you need to earn an endorsement.
At Frontiers in Immunology the layout is more than housekeeping. The endorsing reviewers' names are printed on the accepted article, so a clean two-style post is part of presenting a dialogue you are willing to have your immunology work signed beside.
Tone calibration: how to phrase the hard replies
Every assigned reviewer reads your tone in the shared forum, and the reviewers who endorse will see their names printed on the paper. A defensive answer to Reviewer 1 is visible to Reviewer 2 and to the editor watching the thread. Calibrate.
Bad (defensive or vague) | Better (constructive and validity-focused) |
|---|---|
"The reviewer has misunderstood our gating." | "We did not show the gating clearly; we have added the full strategy with FMO controls as Supplementary Figure 1 and described it on page 6." |
"Our finding is highly relevant to autoimmunity." | "We agree impact is not the bar here. To show the result is valid, we added the isotype control the reviewer requested (new Figure 4b, page 13)." |
"We have addressed this concern." | "We have added the antibody clone, lot number, and validation reference to a Key Resources Table (page 7, lines 2 to 11)." |
"The other reviewer did not raise this issue." | "We appreciate this point and have added biological replicates with the variance and test reported (Figure 2, page 11, lines 3 to 9)." |
"Our conclusion is obviously correct." | "We have added the statistical test the reviewer requested (Methods, page 14); the difference between groups remains significant (p = [value])." |
The pattern that earns endorsements in the forum: concede where the reviewer is right, do the immunology work, point to the exact change, and push back only where a request is genuinely out of scope, with a reason and an alternative. A reviewer who feels their rigor concern was taken seriously endorses; a reviewer who feels argued at withholds.
The Frontiers in Immunology reviewer culture you are writing into
The two-phase forum, not a single letter
Frontiers in Immunology runs Frontiers' collaborative peer review, a two-phase interactive review that looks unlike the single-letter rebuttal cycle at most immunology journals. In the first phase, each reviewer assesses the manuscript independently of the other reviewers and of the authors, completing a standardized review questionnaire tailored to the article type and, for this journal, to immunology. Reviewers are typically asked to file that independent report within roughly 10 days of accepting the invitation.
Once the reports are submitted, the editor activates the second phase and releases them to you. From there, authors and reviewers exchange comments directly in the discussion forum in near-real time, and a reviewer can enter a dialogue with you to request clarifications or further revisions. The specialty chief editor can also step into the thread if needed. Your response to reviewers is a live conversation, not a sealed document you upload once.
Single-anonymized, then signed
Review is single-anonymized: the reviewers know who the authors are, but you do not learn their identities during the process. That changes at acceptance, when the names of the reviewers who endorsed publication are printed on the article.
So the colleagues you are negotiating with in the forum are the same people whose names will sit on your immunology paper. Write every reply with that in mind.
Validity, not impact
The decisive rule is validity, not impact, which puts methodological rigor at the center of each reply. Frontiers states plainly that it does not reject manuscripts on their perceived potential impact and operates with no rejection rate, formal or informal.
Instead, every submission must be VALID: a valid research question and hypothesis, a relevant theoretical frame, correct and transparent methodology and study design, conclusions supported by sufficient data, adequate grounding in the literature, and adherence to ethical policy. For an immunology paper that translates into concrete levers:
- Antibody clone and validation
- Flow cytometry gating strategy and FMO controls
- Isotype and unstained controls
- Biological replicate structure and the right statistical test
- In vivo or human-sample evidence wherever the conclusion claims it
The forum also settles reviewer disagreement in the open. When two reviewers weigh a gating or controls question differently, the editor watches the thread and the dialogue resolves it. Your task is to give both reviewers the same sound, validity-focused answer, not a separate framing for each. The practical consequence is blunt: never argue that your immunology finding is important. Show that it is sound.
The endorsement math is unforgiving
Acceptance carries a hard mechanical gate. Publication needs a majority of the assigned, non-withdrawn reviewers to endorse the work, and any reviewer is free to withdraw from the review at any time.
With the two reviewers typical of a Frontiers in Immunology paper, that majority collapses into unanimity. One reviewer who stays unconvinced about a control or a gating panel can decline to endorse, or step away, and the revision freezes. Your forum response is not aimed at "the reviewers" as a group. It has to hand each individual reviewer a concrete reason to click endorse on every structured immunology question they opened.
Key Insight
At Frontiers in Immunology, acceptance needs a majority of non-withdrawn reviewers to endorse, and their names are printed on your paper. A single unresolved gating, control, or antibody-validation question from one reviewer can stall the entire revision, so run the forum as a per-reviewer endorsement campaign focused on immunology rigor, not as a one-shot rebuttal.
What our Frontiers in Immunology rebuttal reviews surface
In our pre-submission review work with Frontiers in Immunology submissions, the forum responses that stall in a second interactive round share a small set of recurring weaknesses. These are the same ones reviewers withhold endorsement over.
Because the collaborative model hands every reviewer a direct reply button, each weakness tends to spawn a visible follow-up question in the thread. In our analysis of Frontiers in Immunology rebuttals, each pattern below maps to a specific, named failure pattern in the collaborative-review culture, and each is testable against your own draft replies before you post them.
Treating the interactive forum as a one-shot rebuttal. The most frequent pattern in our Frontiers in Immunology pre-submission reviews is an author who drafts one long rebuttal, uploads a revised manuscript, then disappears, even though the forum is built for dialogue. A reviewer who asks a follow-up about an isotype control and gets no further reply will not endorse.
Across our Frontiers in Immunology rebuttal reviews, going quiet after the first post is the strongest single predictor of a stalled interactive round. Stay live in the thread until every reviewer has endorsed.
Arguing impact when the criterion is validity. Authors trained by impact-gated immunology journals answer a methods concern with a paragraph on why the cytokine or autoimmunity finding matters. The bar here is soundness, not importance.
In our Frontiers in Immunology pre-submission reviews we repeatedly find a reply that defends the significance of a result while leaving the requested gating panel or statistical analysis untouched, and we observe that editors specifically screen for exactly that gap before a reviewer declines to endorse. Fix the soundness question the reviewer actually asked; in this forum the importance argument changes no decision.
Leaving an immunology-rigor question unresolved so a reviewer withholds endorsement. Reviewers score you against a standardized questionnaire, so an unanswered item is a citable reason to decline. In our pre-submission review work with Frontiers in Immunology manuscripts, responses that resolve Reviewer 1 thoroughly but skip one of Reviewer 2's questions about flow cytometry gating, antibody validation, or data availability consistently draw a withheld endorsement, which, under the majority-of-non-withdrawn rule, is enough to block acceptance.
Pair each reply with the exact reviewer comment it answers and confirm no comment is left without one.
Claiming an in vivo or mechanistic conclusion the data do not support. A distinctly immunology failure: the rebuttal restates a strong in vivo or mechanistic claim without the controls or replicate structure to back it. In our Frontiers in Immunology pre-submission reviews, a conclusion that asserts causation from a single cohort with no isotype control, or a population frequency reported without a shown gating hierarchy, draws a follow-up the moment a reviewer reads it.
Either add the missing experiment, or soften the conclusion to what the data show, and say which you did.
Generic acknowledgment without a page or line number. When a reply only says "we have revised the manuscript accordingly," the reviewer is left to search for the edit somewhere in a long revised methods section. In our Frontiers in Immunology pre-submission reviews, responses that omit the location of each figure, table, or text change reliably draw a forum follow-up asking where the change is, which adds a round and raises the odds a reviewer withdraws. Attach the revised-file page and line number to every single reply.
Stay live in the forum, answer validity not impact, close every reviewer's immunology question, and document each location. That four-part discipline is what separates a Frontiers in Immunology forum response that earns every endorsement from one that stalls into a second interactive round. Check your Frontiers in Immunology point-by-point response for these patterns before you post.
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See how this manuscript scores against Frontiers in Immunology's requirements before you submit.
When to comply and when to push back
Situation | Recommended approach at Frontiers in Immunology |
|---|---|
Reviewer asks for the flow cytometry gating strategy | Comply. Add the full hierarchy with FMO controls and cite the page and line. |
Reviewer flags a missing isotype, unstained, or negative control | Comply. This is the highest-leverage validity fix; run the control. |
Reviewer asks for antibody clone and validation | Comply. Add a Key Resources Table with clone, lot, and validation reference. |
Reviewer questions replicates or statistics | Comply. Add biological replicates, the variance, and the test to Methods. |
Reviewer challenges an in vivo or mechanistic conclusion | Either add the experiment, or soften the claim to the data and say which. |
Reviewer requests an experiment that is genuinely out of scope | Decline in the forum with a stated reason, offer an alternative analysis, and record the limitation. |
A reviewer stops responding after your reply | Nudge the thread with a short, courteous follow-up; a silent reviewer cannot register an endorsement. |
Source: Manusights pre-submission reviews of Frontiers in Immunology-targeted resubmissions, 2025 cohort.
If you are unsure which immunology-rigor questions a Frontiers in Immunology referee would withhold endorsement over, scan your Frontiers in Immunology forum response for unresolved gating and control gaps before the interactive phase opens. You can also run a plain manuscript readiness pass on the revised file itself.
How much work a Frontiers in Immunology rebuttal actually takes
Authors consistently underestimate the validity work and overestimate the writing. This breakdown is about workload, not the journal's decision clock; for the end-to-end schedule, see the Frontiers in Immunology review time guide.
Rebuttal task | Where the effort goes | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
Reading the standardized questionnaires | Mapping each immunology item to a required change | A careful pass per reviewer, not a skim |
Running validity experiments | Gating panels, controls, replicates, antibody validation, in vivo arms | The bulk of the work, often the binding constraint on the forum window |
Writing the per-comment forum replies | One reply plus a page and line reference per item | Less than authors fear once the data exist |
Staying live in the interactive forum | Answering reviewer follow-ups until each endorses | Skipped most often, and it is what stalls revisions |
Co-author sign-off before posting | All authors confirm accuracy before the forum exchange | One pass, because endorsing reviewer names will be public |
Source: Manusights pre-submission reviews of Frontiers in Immunology resubmissions, 2025 cohort, last updated June 7, 2026.
Honest friction: rejection is real even with no rejection target
Frontiers operating with no rejection rate does not mean acceptance is automatic. The journal rejects manuscripts that fail the validity criteria, and an in-house research-integrity team runs pre- and post-review quality checks that can reject a paper outside the reviewers' hands.
Once the interactive phase is open, the paper can still close in rejection in two ways:
- A reviewer's validity concern goes unresolved.
- A reviewer withdraws, and the endorsements left behind no longer reach a majority.
Most stalls here come down to one error: the author defended impact rather than closing the gating, control, or validation question the reviewer actually raised. Running a close second is forum silence, where a reviewer's follow-up sits unanswered and the endorsement never lands.
Hold off on posting if any one of these is true
Your draft leans on generic "we have addressed this" language with no page or line numbers; a reviewer flagged a gating strategy, isotype control, or antibody-validation gap and you answered with prose about significance; one of Reviewer 2's structured immunology questions has no matching reply; you make an in vivo claim the cohort and controls do not yet support; or you plan to upload the revision and stop watching the forum. Clearing these first is what stops an interactive round from collapsing into a withdrawn endorsement.
Common mistakes a Frontiers in Immunology reviewer spots in seconds
Before you post in the forum, read your own replies for the patterns that trigger an immediate follow-up or a withheld endorsement. Each one is a concrete item you can verify in your draft, not a fuzzy quality judgment.
- A one-shot upload with no forum dialogue. Treating the interactive review as a sealed rebuttal letter and going quiet is the most common cause of a stalled second round. Stay live until every reviewer endorses.
- An impact argument where a validity fix was asked for. A reviewer requested a gating strategy, control, or antibody validation and the reply defends why the result matters.
The bar is soundness; the argument is wasted breath.
- An unresolved immunology-rigor question. A flow-gating, isotype-control, or replicate-structure item from one reviewer with no matching reply.
Under the majority-of-non-withdrawn-reviewers rule, one open question can block acceptance.
- An in vivo or mechanistic claim the data do not support. Causation asserted from one cohort with no control, or a population frequency reported without a shown gating hierarchy, draws a follow-up on sight.
- A reply with no location. Any "we have revised the manuscript" with no page and line number reads as evasion the instant a reviewer cannot find the change in the forum.
How does this guide go beyond the Frontiers in Immunology author guidelines?
The official guidelines tell you to respond in the collaborative forum and to address all comments. They leave out the parts that change how you write every reply:
- Acceptance needs a majority of non-withdrawn reviewers to endorse.
- A single quiet reviewer can stall your paper.
- The criterion is validity, not impact.
- The endorsing reviewers' names get printed on your article.
- For immunology, the validity questionnaire turns on gating, controls, and antibody validation rather than the size of your claim.
The patterns above come from our pre-submission reviews of Frontiers in Immunology rebuttals. They are testable against your own draft today, not theoretical concerns.
- Manusights pre-submission reviews of Frontiers in Immunology-targeted manuscripts (2025 cohort)
Frequently asked questions
It runs inside Frontiers' collaborative review platform as a two-phase process, not a single uploaded rebuttal file. First, each assigned reviewer files an independent standardized report, usually within about 10 days of accepting the invitation. The handling editor then opens the interactive review forum, releases the reports, and you reply to each comment in near-real time while uploading a revised manuscript. Reviewers can reply back and request further clarification, so treat the exchange as an ongoing dialogue rather than a one-shot letter.
Acceptance requires endorsement by a majority of the assigned, non-withdrawn reviewers. With the two reviewers typical of a Frontiers in Immunology paper that usually means both, because a reviewer can withdraw from the forum at any point and stop counting toward the majority. Any single reviewer who keeps one immunology-rigor question open, such as gating strategy or a missing isotype control, can simply decline to endorse, which is what stalls the revision.
No. Frontiers does not reject on perceived impact and publishes no rejection rate. Decisions follow the VALID criteria: a valid research question, a relevant theoretical frame, correct and transparent methodology, conclusions supported by the data, sound ethics, and adequate grounding in the literature. For an immunology paper that means antibody validation, flow cytometry gating, controls, replicate structure, and in vivo support where you make an in vivo claim. Arguing that your finding is important persuades no reviewer; demonstrating that the immunology is sound does.
Yes, for the reviewers who endorse it. When a manuscript is accepted, the names of the reviewers who endorsed publication are printed on the published article. The interactive exchange is therefore semi-public in spirit: a reviewer is attaching their name to your immunology paper, so a gracious, evidence-driven forum dialogue carries more weight than at journals where reviewers stay fully anonymous afterward.
Reviewers complete a standardized, article-type-specific questionnaire that maps to the VALID criteria, and for immunology that questionnaire surfaces field-specific gates: antibody clone and validation, flow cytometry gating strategy and fluorescence-minus-one controls, isotype and unstained controls, biological replicate structure, statistical test choice, and in vivo or human-sample evidence where the conclusion claims it. A reply that leaves any one of these gating or control questions unanswered is a concrete reason a reviewer can withhold endorsement.
Sources
- Peer review guidelines, Frontiers (accessed June 2026)
- What is the peer review process at Frontiers? (accessed June 2026)
- Editor guidelines, Frontiers in Immunology (accessed June 2026)
- Frontiers in Immunology journal home and scope (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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