IEEE TSP Response to Reviewers: Technical Revision Guide
An IEEE TSP revision guide for reconciling assumptions, derivations, theorem conditions, baselines, experiments, complexity, and reproducibility.
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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 IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing response to reviewers must connect each comment to the revised technical artifact. Start with the Associate Editor's controlling issues, then answer every reviewer point. State the uncertainty, action, result, and exact location. Cite page and line, theorem, equation, assumption, algorithm, figure, table, appendix, or code release. IEEE Signal Processing Society guidance expects both a revised manuscript and response letter; returning reviewers can verify whether the theory, experiments, and claims changed together.
Last reviewed: July 13, 2026.
Use the IEEE TSP revision readiness scan before upload. Initial requirements belong to the TSP submission guide, status belongs to TSP under review, and the TSP journal profile provides venue context.
From our manuscript review practice
In TSP revisions we review, the common technical break is an assumption repaired in the theorem or appendix while the abstract, algorithm box, simulations, and conclusion still imply the original unrestricted claim. Re-review tests the entire claim chain, not the local proof edit.
What the IEEE SPS revision workflow changes
Current IEEE Signal Processing Society Associate Editor guidance specifies a six-week response window for RQ major required revision and a three-week window for AQ minor required revision, with extensions agreed through the AE and Publications Office. Original reviewers are normally invited back for an RQ revision.
The response therefore needs a returning-reviewer audit trail:
Reviewer concern | Required evidence | Incomplete response |
|---|---|---|
Assumption is unrealistic | Explicit regime, sensitivity, and excluded cases | Calling the model standard |
Theorem condition is incomplete | Correct condition, derivation, limits, and synchronized claims | Repairing only the appendix |
Problem is non-identifiable | Uniqueness conditions, ambiguity class, or bounded recovery | Showing one numerical solution |
Baseline is unfair | Equal data, information, tuning, initialization, and compute | Adding a comparator with weak settings |
Experiment is insufficient | Synthetic control plus realistic data and uncertainty | One benchmark average |
Complexity is ignored | Asymptotic, runtime, memory, convergence, and scale | Reporting FLOPs without operating context |
Copyable IEEE TSP response template
Keep AE and reviewer comments in bold or boxes. Keep responses in regular text and use stable labels for assumptions, equations, and algorithms.
Dear Associate Editor,
Thank you for the RQ decision on manuscript TSP-2026-1184,
"Identifiable Blind Recovery Under Structured Interference." Your summary
identifies three controlling issues: the uniqueness condition, fairness of
the sparse-recovery baselines, and behavior under model mismatch. We address
these first and then respond point by point. Page and line numbers refer to
the clean revised manuscript.
Associate Editor Issue 1: Identifiability
Response: We corrected Assumption A2, added Proposition 1 defining the
ambiguity class, and replaced the uniqueness statement in Theorem 2. The
abstract and conclusion now limit exact recovery to measurements satisfying
the revised rank condition. See page 5, lines 4-32; equations (8)-(12);
page 7, Theorem 2; and Appendix A.
Reviewer 1, Comment 3
"The baseline comparison uses different initialization information."
Response: We agree. All methods now receive the same spectral initialization,
measurement budget, stopping rule, and tuning grid. Table II reports median
and interquartile error across 50 trials. See page 10, lines 7-28 and the
revised experiment configuration in repository release v2.1.
Reviewer 2, Comment 5
"Robustness to colored noise and dictionary mismatch is unclear."
Response: We added controlled sweeps for noise correlation and mismatch and
report the failure boundary in Figure 5. Performance degrades beyond the
tested condition, so the title and conclusion no longer claim general
robustness. See page 13, lines 2-24.
Sincerely,
Dr. A. Researcher, on behalf of all authorsIf the decision uses AQ rather than RQ, keep the same traceability. A shorter deadline does not make unresolved technical statements minor.
Put page, line, theorem, and regime in every reply
A page and line citation helps navigation, but mathematical concerns need stable technical identifiers. Name the assumption, theorem, equation range, algorithm step, figure, table, or appendix. State the regime in the reply when validity depends on sparsity, rank, stationarity, independence, noise, sample size, or initialization.
After compilation, check all equation and theorem numbers. Renumbering can make a rigorous response look careless.
Typography for multi-reviewer TSP responses
Use bold text, boxes, or indentation to distinguish reviewer comments from author replies. Do not rely on color, especially when equations and symbols are involved. Keep the AE summary, reviewer text, quoted revisions, and mathematical derivations visually separate.
In the marked manuscript, highlight changed symbols, inequalities, conditions, and algorithm steps, not only whole paragraphs. A one-character condition can alter the result.
Build a claim-to-proof-to-experiment ledger
Comment | Technical uncertainty | Artifact to revise | Claim affected |
|---|---|---|---|
Uniqueness is not established | Identifiability | Assumptions, proposition, proof | Exact recovery |
Convergence condition is missing | Algorithm validity | Lemma, theorem, pseudocode | Guarantee |
Baseline has less information | Comparison fairness | Protocol, tuning grid, Table II | State of the art |
Noise model is narrow | Robustness | Sensitivity sweep, Figure 5 | Generality |
Runtime is impractical | Computational burden | Complexity and scale experiment | Applicability |
Code differs from algorithm | Reproducibility | Tagged implementation and test | Verifiability |
The last column forces every technical repair into the abstract, introduction, and conclusion where necessary.
Tone calibration for TSP rebuttals
Avoid | Better |
|---|---|
"The theorem is correct as written." | "The conclusion is correct only under the revised rank condition. We corrected Assumption A2 and narrowed the abstract and conclusion." |
"The reviewer chose an unfair baseline." | "The original protocol supplied different initialization information. We reran all methods under a shared information and tuning budget." |
"Colored noise is outside scope." | "Colored noise is outside the proof, but it tests the robustness language. We added a sweep and now state the failure boundary." |
"Convergence is obvious." | "We added Lemma 2, state the descent condition, and report convergence behavior when that condition fails." |
"The code will be released." | "Release v2.1 reproduces Tables II-III and Figures 3-5 from the documented environment and seeds." |
Push back by separating mathematical problems, information budgets, and operating regimes. Do not dismiss a request because it is not convenient to implement.
In our review work with IEEE TSP revisions
In our pre-submission and revision work with IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing manuscripts, we audit the response against assumptions, definitions, equations, proofs, algorithm boxes, baseline implementations, experiment configurations, figures, tables, code, abstract, and conclusion. These are qualitative Manusights patterns, not IEEE editorial statistics or confidential review access.
Pattern 1: the TSP theorem is repaired locally
A reviewer finds a missing rank, convexity, independence, or initialization condition. The appendix proof is corrected, but the abstract still promises unconditional recovery and the algorithm box does not check the new condition. In IEEE TSP revisions, we search every claim-bearing component for the old scope. The repair is complete only when theorem, algorithm, experiments, and headline share one regime.
Pattern 2: identifiability is replaced with empirical success
The manuscript presents one recovered signal or low average error and treats it as evidence of uniqueness. We inspect ambiguity classes, symmetries, null spaces, sample conditions, and counterexamples. When theory cannot establish uniqueness, the TSP response should distinguish successful estimation under tested conditions from identifiable recovery.
Pattern 3: a new baseline is added without equal resources
The requested comparator appears in Table II but receives a different initialization, training set, stopping tolerance, hyperparameter search, side information, or compute budget. We reconstruct the information and tuning budget line by line. Fair comparison can weaken the headline while making the final claim defensible.
Pattern 4: robustness is inferred from one average
Results aggregate across SNR, sparsity, dimension, mismatch, or signal family, hiding where the method fails. We require condition-wise uncertainty and a failure map. Returning reviewers need to see the operating boundary, not only the mean advantage.
The useful information gain is synchronization: mathematical condition, implementation, experiment, and claim must describe the same signal-processing problem after revision.
Check the TSP response, proof, and experiment chain together.
Handling reviewer disagreement
When one reviewer requests a general theorem and another asks for realistic non-ideal experiments, state the relationship for the AE. A clean idealized guarantee plus bounded empirical sensitivity can be coherent if the manuscript separates proof scope from observed robustness.
Do not answer conflicting requests in isolation. The AE needs one contribution and one validity boundary across the revised package.
Why TSP revisions still end in rejection
RQ or AQ is not acceptance. Rejection-on-revision risk remains when a central proof gap persists, the new condition is hidden from headline claims, the requested baseline remains unequal, or experiments do not test the uncertainty raised.
Most dangerous is a response that is formally complete while code and manuscript still implement or claim the old problem.
Submit if; think twice if
Submit if: repaired assumptions appear in the theorem, algorithm, experiments, abstract, and conclusion; baseline information and tuning budgets are equal; uncertainty and failure boundaries are visible; and the tagged code reproduces revised tables and figures.
Think twice if: exact recovery is still claimed without identifiability, the proof and implementation use different conditions, a comparator remains information-limited, or robustness rests on one aggregate benchmark. Those are substantive rejection-on-revision risks even when every reviewer comment has a written reply.
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How this page was reviewed
We reviewed current IEEE Signal Processing Society guidance for authors, reviewers, and Associate Editors, then applied the claim-to-proof-to-experiment audit above. We also separated publisher-stated deadlines and workflow from Manusights interpretation of technical evidence. This page helps authors verify a technical revision; it does not predict acceptance, infer a private review outcome, or replace the decision letter. The actual decision code and agreed deadline remain authoritative for one manuscript.
Equation numbering and compiled file locations should be checked again immediately before upload.
Final IEEE TSP revision audit
- Confirm the deadline and decision code in the letter.
- Put AE priorities before reviewer sections.
- Reproduce every comment and answer every subpart.
- Cite page, line, assumption, theorem, equation, algorithm, figure, and table.
- Test identifiability and limiting cases.
- Equalize baseline information, tuning, initialization, and compute.
- Report uncertainty and failure boundaries.
- Tag code, environment, parameters, and seeds.
- Synchronize abstract and conclusion with repaired conditions.
- Keep reviewer and author text visually distinct.
Measure after 14 final GSC days. At day 21, keep, revise, or stop based on indexing, query ownership, impressions, clicks, and qualified review starts. The journal's 10,104 impressions and two starts are proxies, not exact-query forecasts.
IEEE SPS sources establish revision timing and review workflow. The technical ledger is Manusights analysis.
Frequently asked questions
Lead with the Associate Editor's controlling technical issues, then reproduce and answer every reviewer comment. State the uncertainty, action, result, and exact page, line, theorem, equation, algorithm, table, figure, appendix, or code location.
Current SPS Associate Editor guidance states that authors upload the revised manuscript and response letter within six weeks for RQ major required revision and three weeks for AQ minor required revision, unless an amended deadline is agreed with the AE and Publications Office. Follow the actual decision letter.
Yes, if the comparator solves a different problem or uses a different information budget. Define the shared assumptions, data, supervision, tuning, and compute; add the closest fair test; and narrow the claim if the requested comparison exposes a real boundary.
Expect returning reviewers to inspect assumptions, theorem conditions, derivations, identifiability, convergence, baseline fairness, experiment design, complexity, reproducibility, and whether every repaired condition reaches the abstract and conclusion.
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Where to go next
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