Organization Science Response to Reviewers: How to Develop the Contribution Across a Revision (2026)
How to write a point-by-point response to reviewers for Organization Science, where the Senior Editor and Editorial Review Board develop your paper across a revision and you sharpen the contribution rather than defend your original framing.
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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 Organization Science response to reviewers is a point-by-point rebuttal written into a developmental review culture, where the Senior Editor and Editorial Review Board work with you to develop the paper across a revision rather than only judge it. Because the journal screens for the overall contribution to organization research, every reply should sharpen the theory, the data, the mechanism, or the boundary conditions, not defend your original framing.
Open with a short letter to the Senior Editor, answer under Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2, specify the page and line number you cite for every change, submit the expected marked-up manuscript, and treat a revise-and-resubmit as an invitation to develop the contribution the reviewers steered toward.
Start with the Organization Science rebuttal readiness check before you resubmit, or work through this guide by hand. For broader cluster context, see the Organization Science journal hub.
What does an Organization Science response to reviewers require?
The Manusights Organization Science rebuttal scan. A developmental-review journal asks a different question of your response than a fix-the-errors journal does: did the contribution actually grow? This guide explains what a Senior Editor reads before you upload the revision to the Organization Science ScholarOne portal.
We have pre-screened manuscripts and rebuttals across Organization Science, INFORMS, and organization-research venues, so the gaps surfaced here are the ones reviewers raise at re-review. Your manuscript is never used to train any model and is deleted within 24 hours of the scan.
Three things make an Organization Science rebuttal different from a generic one:
- It is developmental. Editors and reviewers work with authors to develop papers, so the response has to show the contribution grew because of their steer, not that you defended what you already had.
- A Senior Editor owns the decision. The journal runs on a decentralized structure where a Senior Editor integrates the reviewer reports with their own reading, so your letter to the Senior Editor matters as much as the per-reviewer replies.
- The bar is the overall contribution to organization research. The journal holds that theoretical novelty is neither necessary nor sufficient, so a revision can develop new theory, new data, a methodological insight, a new setting, a mechanism, or an insight on a social problem.
How we built this guide: we read the Organization Science submission guidelines, the INFORMS editorial statement, the journal's stated developmental philosophy, and the Manuscript Central resubmission requirements. We checked them against the management-field "Responding to Reviewers" canon and against our own pre-submission reviews of Organization Science-targeted manuscripts, so every claim below traces to a primary source or our review corpus.
Use it to pressure-test your point-by-point response and your revised contribution statement before you submit the revision.
The cost of a wasted round is your months, not your money
Publishing in Organization Science is subscription-based. INFORMS charges an article-processing fee only on the optional INFORMS Open Option open-access track, a one-time $3,000 paid after acceptance. So a stalled revision costs you time, not dollars, which is exactly why it pays to develop the contribution fully the first time rather than risk a rejection on revision.
Element | What Organization Science expects | What reviewers flag at re-review |
|---|---|---|
Structure | Senior Editor letter, then point-by-point under Reviewer 1 and 2 | Free-form prose answering all comments together |
Required files | Point-by-point response (required) plus a marked-up manuscript (expected) | Clean file only, with no highlighted changes |
Development | The contribution grows: theory, data, mechanism, or boundary | "We have clarified this in the text" with no developed move |
Specificity | Page and line number for every manuscript change | "We have updated the manuscript" with no location |
Posture | Treat developmental guidance as the steer for the revision | Treating reviewer suggestions as optional |
Consistency | Same answer to the same point across both reviewers | Different framing for Reviewer 1 vs Reviewer 2 |
Source: Organization Science submission guidelines and INFORMS editorial statement, accessed June 2026.
The copyable Organization Science rebuttal template
In a decentralized process where one Senior Editor carries your file from invitation to decision, a clean structure is doing real work: it lets the editor confirm at a glance that each developmental steer was answered. 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 Senior Editor,
Thank you for the opportunity to revise our manuscript the manuscript title
(ORGSCI-[ID]). We are grateful to you and the two reviewers for a
developmental review. In response, we have developed [the construct /
the mechanism / the empirical test] the reviewers steered toward,
revised the contribution statement to name the contribution type, and
revised Table [N]. 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, and a marked-up manuscript is
attached.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewer 1
Comment 1.1: "The theoretical mechanism linking [X] to [Y] is
asserted rather than developed."
Response: We agree. We have developed the mechanism explicitly,
deriving the mediating process and stating the boundary condition.
The sharpened argument and the new theory figure appear on page 6,
lines 8 to 21.
Comment 1.2: "The contribution to organization research is not clearly
distinguished from existing work."
Response: We have revised the contribution statement to name the
contribution type (new mechanism) and added a paragraph distinguishing
it from [prior account]. See page 2, lines 3 to 14, and the revised
contribution statement.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewer 2
Comment 2.1: "The sample is not described well enough to judge the
empirical claim."
Response: We have clarified that n = [N] and added the construct-
validity evidence and the robustness check to the Methods. See page
17, lines 2 to 19, and the new Appendix B.
We believe the revised manuscript now develops the contribution the
review steered toward and we look forward to your decision.
Sincerely,
[Corresponding author, on behalf of all authors]The skeleton front-loads the four things a Senior Editor reads an Organization Science revision for:
- A letter to the Senior Editor that names what you developed, not just what you fixed.
- A Reviewer 1 / 2 structure so each developmental steer maps to a visible reply.
- Development verbs ("we have developed", "we have revised", "we have clarified") that signal the contribution moved.
- A page and line reference for every change, so the editor can verify it against the marked-up file in seconds.
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, table, or appendix you changed. A located reply does something specific at a developmental journal: it lets the Senior Editor confirm not just that you touched the manuscript, but that the contribution moved where the round steered it.
INFORMS requires a point-by-point Response to Reviewers document at resubmission, and a marked-up manuscript showing tracked changes is the expected companion file. Both exist so the Senior Editor and reviewers can verify each developmental move fast. A reply with no location forces the reviewer to hunt for the change and reads as evasion.
The contrast is concrete. A reviewer who can click straight to page 6, lines 8 to 21, and see the developed mechanism finishes faster and re-reviews more favorably. A few rules keep your locations trustworthy:
- Never write "we have addressed this in the manuscript" without a page and line.
- Use the line numbers from the revised file, not the original.
- Flag when a developed move lives in an appendix rather than the main text, so the editor knows where the contribution grew.
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.
This matters more at Organization Science than at a fix-the-typo journal. A developmental reply here is rarely a one-line correction; it is usually a paragraph that derives a mechanism, defends a boundary condition, or argues an empirical claim. When the reviewer's prompt and your developed answer share the same formatting, the Senior Editor reading for "did the contribution grow?" loses the thread. A clean visual boundary keeps each steer paired with the development it produced.
Tone calibration: how to phrase the hard replies
Organization Science's developmental culture means reviewers expect a collaborator, not a defendant. The Senior Editor and both reviewers see your tone across every comment. A defensive reply to Reviewer 1 is visible to Reviewer 2 and to the Senior Editor, and it reads as a refusal to develop the paper. Calibrate.
Bad (defensive or off-mandate) | Better (developmental and on-contribution) |
|---|---|
"The reviewer has misunderstood our contribution." | "We did not state the contribution clearly; we have sharpened it in the revised introduction and revised the contribution statement on page 2, lines 3 to 14." |
"This additional analysis is outside the scope of our paper." | "We agree this would strengthen the contribution. Because [reason], we have instead developed [the boundary condition] on page 9 and noted the open question in the Discussion." |
"We have addressed this concern." | "We have developed the mechanism the reviewer asked for (new theory figure, page 6, lines 8 to 21)." |
"The original framing was already correct." | "We appreciate the steer and have developed the framing rather than defended it; see the sharpened proposition on page 5, lines 14 to 20." |
"Our empirical result is obviously sound." | "We have added the construct-validity evidence and the robustness check the reviewer requested (Methods, page 17); the effect holds." |
The pattern that works: concede where the reviewer is right, develop the contribution, point to the exact change and the marked-up manuscript, and push back only on a steer that is genuinely off-contribution, with a reason and an alternative.
The Organization Science reviewer culture you are writing into
A Senior Editor, not a committee, decides your fate
Organization Science runs a decentralized editorial structure of Senior Editors and an Editorial Review Board. Each Senior Editor has the autonomy to accept, reject, or invite a revision.
The Senior Editor integrates the reviewer reports with their own reading to reach the decision. So your response is a document for the Senior Editor first and the reviewers second. External review is double-blind by at least two reviewers, which means authors and reviewers are hidden from each other. Keep author-identifying detail, including self-citations phrased to break the blind, out of the revised file.
Developmental review raises the bar on every round
The defining feature is the developmental posture, which sets a collaborative tone the response has to meet. INFORMS states that editors and reviewers work with authors to develop papers, and the journal explicitly seeks shorter and fewer review rounds to either shepherd a manuscript toward publication or return it so it can be submitted elsewhere.
The practical consequence: the reviewer comments are a steer toward a stronger contribution. Your reply has to show the theory, the data, the mechanism, or the boundary condition grew because of that steer, with the methodological rigor the empirical reviewers expect when the contribution is data rather than theory.
The "shorter and fewer rounds" philosophy also raises the stakes on each response. The Senior Editor is deciding whether this round moved the paper far enough to keep, not whether another round is worth the wait.
The contribution bar travels into the revision
A revise-and-resubmit at Organization Science carries a specific meaning. The journal judges the overall contribution to organization research of any recognized type, new theory, new data, a methodological insight, a new setting, a mechanism, or an insight on an important social problem, and holds that theoretical novelty is neither necessary nor sufficient.
So a revision is not always "deepen the theory." Sometimes it is "make the empirical contribution land" or "sharpen the mechanism." Read which contribution type the reviewers are steering toward, and develop that one. In practice the editors evaluate whether your response developed the contribution the round steered toward, not whether the letter sounds agreeable.
The contribution statement of fewer than 500 words, required since June 1, 2023, is read at the desk alongside your abstract. A revision that changed the contribution usually needs a revised statement to match.
How Organization Science sits among its neighbors
Where you target shapes the revision, so calibrate against the field:
- At the Academy of Management Review, you develop theory only; AMR rejects empirical work.
- At the Academy of Management Journal, the revision tightens the empirical hypothesis test.
- At Administrative Science Quarterly, a similar developmental ethos, but framed as interdisciplinary organization theory.
- At Management Science (Organizations department), the contribution must carry a broad cross-INFORMS management consequence.
- At Science, Nature, or PNAS (the natural-science flagships an organization scholar occasionally targets with an interdisciplinary paper), a novelty-first bar and a new-experiments revision norm.
Organization Science sits in the middle: it wants the contribution to organization research itself, of any type, developed for a broad multidisciplinary readership. Because the Senior Editor and the reviewers evaluate the portfolio of contribution and steer developmentally, a revision that answers a "sharpen the contribution" request by defending the original framing misreads the journal's whole posture.
The one move that decides the round
An Organization Science revision is judged by the contribution it develops, not the framing it defends. Read which contribution type the reviewers are steering toward, theory, data, mechanism, or boundary, and develop that one, then update the contribution statement to match.
What our Organization Science rebuttal reviews surface
In our pre-submission review work with Organization Science manuscripts, the rebuttals that stall in a second round share a small set of recurring weaknesses. They are the same ones reviewers flag at re-review, and because the Senior Editor seeks shorter and fewer rounds, a weak response that triggers another round is expensive.
In our analysis of Organization Science rebuttals, each weakness below maps to a specific, named failure pattern in the journal's developmental, contribution-judged culture. Each is testable against your own draft response before you upload it.
1. Answering a "deepen the theory" steer with more empirics or literature. The most common and most expensive pattern in our Organization Science pre-submission reviews is a rebuttal that meets a request to develop the theory by adding another robustness check or a longer literature review. When a reviewer says the mechanism is asserted rather than developed, the answer is a sharper derivation and a clearer boundary condition, not a third dataset.
Across our Organization Science rebuttal reviews, this mismatch between the contribution type the reviewer steered toward and the one the author delivered is the single strongest predictor of another round. The mirror error also appears: answering a "make the empirical claim land" steer with more theory.
2. Defending the original framing instead of developing it. The developmental culture expects the contribution to grow across the round. In our Organization Science pre-submission reviews, the rebuttals we flag hardest are the ones that explain why the original framing was already correct rather than showing how it evolved because of the reviewers' steer.
A reply that says "the reviewer misunderstood our contribution" in a developmental review reads as a refusal to engage. The same point, rewritten as "we did not state the contribution clearly; here is the sharpened mechanism in the revised introduction and the new theory figure on page 6," reads as the work of a scholar the Senior Editor can keep developing the paper with.
3. Treating developmental reviewer guidance as optional. Because Organization Science reviewers steer toward a stronger paper, a rebuttal that picks and chooses which suggestions to engage signals you missed the journal's posture. In our pre-submission review work with Organization Science manuscripts, responses that quietly skip a reviewer's proposed boundary condition, alternative explanation, or sample-validity concern consistently draw a re-review comment asking why it was ignored, which adds the very round the Senior Editor was trying to avoid.
Engage every steer, even the ones you ultimately decline, with a reason stated in the contribution.
4. Letting the contribution statement and the revision drift apart. Because the under-500-word contribution statement is read at the desk, a revision that sharpened the theory or shifted the contribution type while leaving the statement unchanged reads as carelessness in the document the Senior Editor weighs most. In our Organization Science pre-submission reviews, we routinely find a marked-up methods section that developed the empirical claim paired with a stale contribution statement that still describes the original framing.
Update the statement to name the recognized contribution type the revised paper now claims.
The four-part discipline that separates a rebuttal clearing one round from one stalling into a second: develop the contribution the reviewers steered toward, engage every steer, reconcile across reviewers, and realign the contribution statement. Scan my Organization Science revision for contribution-development gaps before you submit.
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When to develop and when to push back
Situation | Recommended approach at Organization Science |
|---|---|
Reviewer says the mechanism is asserted, not developed | Develop it. Derive the process, state the boundary, cite the page and line. |
Reviewer asks for an analysis that is genuinely off-contribution | Push back with a reason, develop an alternative, note the open question in the Discussion. |
Reviewer flags a construct-validity or sample gap | Develop it. Add the validity evidence or robustness check to Methods. |
Reviewer steers the paper toward a different contribution type | Follow the steer, develop that type, and revise the contribution statement to match. |
Reviewer asks you to broaden the framing for the readership | Develop it. Organization Science wants a broad, multidisciplinary contribution. |
Reviewer raises a point a co-author disputes | Engage substantively, defend with developed argument, accept refinements. The Senior Editor reads every reply. |
Source: Manusights pre-submission reviews of Organization Science-targeted resubmissions, 2025 cohort.
How much work an Organization Science rebuttal actually takes
Authors consistently underestimate the development effort and overestimate the writing effort. This breakdown is about workload, not the journal's decision clock; for the end-to-end schedule and the contribution-statement mechanics, see the Organization Science submission guide.
Rebuttal task | Where the effort goes | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
Reading and clustering the reviewer steers | Finding which contribution type the round is steering toward | A day of careful reading, not a skim |
Developing the theory, data, or mechanism | The actual bar for a revision here | The bulk of the work, often several weeks |
Writing the point-by-point replies | One developed reply plus a page and line reference per comment | Less than authors fear once the development is done |
Producing the marked-up manuscript | The expected companion file that lets reviewers verify each change | A pass over the whole revised file, skipped at your peril |
Realigning the contribution statement | The under-500-word statement the desk reads first | One careful pass, because the Senior Editor weighs it |
Source: Manusights pre-submission reviews of Organization Science resubmissions, 2025 cohort, last updated June 7, 2026.
Honest friction: rejection on revision is real
A revise-and-resubmit at Organization Science is not a soft acceptance. The journal is selective, with an acceptance rate around 10%. The revised manuscript, your point-by-point response, and the marked-up file go back to the Senior Editor, who integrates the reviewer reports and can still decide on rejection if the contribution did not develop.
Because the journal seeks shorter and fewer rounds, the Senior Editor is also weighing whether to return the paper so it can be submitted elsewhere rather than grant another round. Most rejections at this stage trace to one cause: the author answered a "develop the contribution" steer with the wrong move, more empirics where the steer was theory, or a defense of the original framing. The second most common is an inconsistent answer to a point raised by both reviewers.
Think twice before you resubmit if any of these are true:
- The response uses generic "we have addressed this" language with no page or line numbers and no marked-up manuscript.
- A reviewer asked you to develop the theory and you answered with another robustness check.
- The same construct or boundary concern from both reviewers got two different answers.
- The revision sharpened the contribution but the contribution statement still describes the original framing.
Fixing these before resubmission is what keeps a single round from becoming a rejection in a process built to avoid extra rounds.
Red flag patterns an Organization Science 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 and no marked-up file. Any "we have revised the manuscript" with no page and line number, in a process where the reviewer expects a tracked-changes file to check against, reads as evasion the moment they cannot find the change.
- More empirics where development was requested. A reviewer asked you to develop a mechanism or boundary condition and the reply only adds another dataset or a longer literature review.
This is the single most common cause of a second round.
- A defended framing instead of a developed one. "Our original contribution was already correct" in a developmental review reads as a refusal to engage the journal's whole posture.
- A stale contribution statement. The revision changed the contribution but the under-500-word statement still describes the paper you first submitted, the document the Senior Editor reads first.
How does this guide go beyond the Organization Science author guidelines?
The official guidelines tell you to resubmit within 6 months, to provide a point-by-point response document, and that review is double-blind by at least two reviewers.
They do not tell you that the review is developmental, that the Senior Editor integrates the reports and seeks shorter and fewer rounds, that the journal judges the overall contribution rather than theoretical novelty alone, or that your contribution statement usually has to be revised to match a developed paper. Those facts change how you write every reply.
The patterns above come from our pre-submission reviews of Organization Science rebuttals. They are testable against your own draft today, not theoretical concerns.
- Manusights pre-submission reviews of Organization Science-targeted manuscripts (2025 cohort)
Frequently asked questions
Open with a short letter to the Senior Editor explaining how you developed the contribution, then answer every comment in order under Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2. Quote each comment in full, state the exact change you made, and give the page and line number in the revised manuscript. INFORMS requires a point-by-point Response to Reviewers document at resubmission, and a marked-up manuscript with tracked changes is the expected companion file.
No. A revise-and-resubmit is an invitation to develop the paper, not an acceptance, and Organization Science is selective at roughly a 10% acceptance rate. The revised manuscript, your point-by-point response, and the marked-up file go back to the Senior Editor, who integrates the reviewer reports to reach the next decision, and the paper can still be rejected if the contribution did not develop. Resubmit within 6 months of the revision invitation.
Organization Science runs a developmental culture where editors and reviewers work with authors to develop papers, and the journal explicitly seeks shorter and fewer review rounds to either shepherd a manuscript toward publication or return it so it can be submitted elsewhere. The practical consequence for your response: treat reviewer guidance as the steer for developing the contribution, show in each reply how the construct, the analysis, or the boundary condition grew because of the comment, and do not let a round drift.
Yes. The under-500-word contribution statement, required in every submission since June 1, 2023, is read at the desk alongside your abstract, so a revision that sharpened the theory or the mechanism usually needs a revised contribution statement to match. If the reviewers steered the paper toward a different recognized contribution type, new theory, new data, a methodological insight, a new setting, a mechanism, or an insight on a social problem, update the statement to name the type the revised paper now claims.
Manuscripts are reviewed double-blind by at least two reviewers, and the Senior Editor integrates the reviewer reports with their own reading to reach a decision. Your response is read by the Senior Editor and every reviewer who handled the paper, so reconcile any construct, sample-size, or boundary-condition concern raised by more than one reviewer to a single consistent answer before you resubmit.
Sources
- Submission Guidelines, Organization Science, INFORMS PubsOnLine (accessed June 2026)
- Editorial Statement, Organization Science, INFORMS PubsOnLine (accessed June 2026)
- Senior Editors, Organization Science, INFORMS PubsOnLine (accessed June 2026)
- Organization Science Manuscript Central submission portal (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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