Physical Review D Response to Reviewers: How to Write a Reply to the Referee That Wins (2026)
Pre-submission and post-decision guide for Physical Review D (PRD) authors writing a reply to the referee. Grounded in pre-submission review work on PRD-targeted manuscripts.
Readiness scan
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Run the Free Readiness Scan to catch the issues most likely to stop the paper before peer review.
Physical Review D 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 5.3 puts Physical Review D 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 ~~50-60% 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: Physical Review D takes ~~60-90 days median. 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 Physical Review D response to reviewers is a point-by-point reply to the referee. Open with a short note to the scientific editor summarizing the major changes, then quote each referee comment, give your reply, and specify the exact equation, section, or page and line you changed (every response must cite the location the referee can verify).
PRD runs single-anonymized review with a scientific editor and typically one to two specialist referees, so the bar is correctness and testability, not persuasion. Upload a marked manuscript with changes highlighted alongside the reply.
Run the Physical Review D reply-to-referee readiness check to flag generic acknowledgments and unverified numerical claims before you resubmit, or work through this guide manually. Need broader cluster context? See the Physical Review D journal overview.
Last reviewed: June 6, 2026.
The one rule that decides your next round
PRD referees re-read your revised manuscript against each specific change. If your reply says "we have clarified this" but never names the equation, section, or page and line, the referee cannot verify the fix and the paper goes back for another round. Specificity is not politeness here. It is what closes the review.
What does a Physical Review D response to reviewers require?
PRD expects a point-by-point reply to the referee, not a narrative summary. The American Physical Society asks authors to "respond to all points raised by the referees," including the points you disagree with, and to submit "a summary of the changes made" plus a marked manuscript with the changes highlighted. The scientific editor handling your paper reads your reply against the referee reports before deciding whether to send it back to the same referees, accept it, or reject it.
PRD differs from a broad-science journal in one structural way: the people reading your reply are subfield specialists in particle physics, gravitation, or cosmology. A reply that reads well but does not engage the physics will not move a PRD referee. The reply has to do the same work the manuscript does, which is to show that the result is correct, that it connects to a physical observable, and that any numerical claim is converged and error-bounded.
PRD imposes no strict word or page limit on a regular article, and that freedom applies to the revised manuscript too. The journal uses REVTeX 4.2 and the APS numbered reference style, so your revised reference list stays in square-bracket numerical order even after you insert new citations. The abstract stays in the 200 to 600 words the journal recommends.
None of these mechanics excuse a reply that does not locate its changes, but getting them right signals to the referee that the revision was done carefully rather than in a rush.
Element | What Physical Review D expects | What gets flagged |
|---|---|---|
Structure | Point-by-point, each referee comment quoted in full | Free-form prose that summarizes all comments together |
Editor note | Short cover note summarizing major changes | No note, or a sales pitch instead of a change summary |
Change references | Exact equation, section, or page and line per change | "We have updated the manuscript" with no location |
Tone | Collegial, substantive on the physics | Defensive on cosmetic points, dismissive on substance |
Numerical claims | Convergence study and an error budget when challenged | A revised number with no method or uncertainty |
Marked manuscript | Uploaded with changes highlighted | Clean file only, forcing the referee to hunt |
Source: APS author guidance on responding to referee reports + Manusights pre-submission review of PRD-targeted resubmissions, accessed June 2026.
A copyable Physical Review D reply-to-referee template
This is the structure PRD referees expect. Quote the referee verbatim, respond, then point to the exact location of the change. Replace the bracketed text with your own.
Dear Editor,
We thank you and the referee for the careful reading of our manuscript
[manuscript number]. We have revised the paper in response to every point
below. The major changes are: (1) we now state the observable predicted by
our result in the abstract and Sec. V; (2) we have added a convergence study
for the lattice extrapolation in Sec. IV B and Appendix A; and (3) we have
expanded the comparison to recent literature in Table II. A marked manuscript
with all changes highlighted is uploaded alongside this reply.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Referee 1, Comment 1:
"The paper presents an elegant derivation, but it is unclear what
experimental signature the result predicts."
Response:
We agree this was not explicit. We have revised the abstract (page 1,
lines 8 to 12) and added a new paragraph in Sec. V (page 9, lines 3 to 18)
that names the observable and gives the predicted magnitude in Eq. (27).
The result is now tied to a measurable quantity rather than left implicit.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Referee 1, Comment 2:
"The numerical results in Fig. 3 are reported without a convergence study."
Response:
We have added the lattice-spacing extrapolation and the statistical and
systematic error budget. See the new Sec. IV B (page 7, lines 20 to 41),
Fig. 4, and Appendix A. The central value in Eq. (31) is unchanged within
the quoted uncertainty.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Referee 1, Comment 3:
"The advance over Ref. [12] is not clearly stated."
Response:
We respectfully note that Ref. [12] treats only the static limit. We have
clarified the distinction and added Table II (page 8) comparing our result
to Refs. [12] and [18], with the delta stated in the caption. We have
revised the discussion accordingly (page 8, lines 5 to 22).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We believe these revisions address the referee's concerns and have
strengthened the paper. We thank the referee again for the constructive
report.The template hits the four things a PRD reply needs: an opening to the editor, the referee point quoted, action language ("we have revised," "we have added," "we have clarified"), and an exact location for every change.
How many referees, and who actually decides at Physical Review D
PRD uses single-anonymized peer review: the referees see your name, you do not see theirs. A scientific editor owns your paper and typically consults one to two specialist referees, sometimes one. This matters for your reply because there is no panel to win over by volume. You are writing to a small number of experts and to the editor who weighs their reports.
A single-referee model changes the math of pushback. When one specialist holds the technical objection, a vague rebuttal does not get outvoted by friendlier reviewers, because there are none. The single specialist either accepts your revised physics or does not. That is why a PRD reply leans heavily on equations, convergence data, and citations rather than on framing.
Re-refereeing is common. Most PRD revisions go back to the original referee, who re-reads the manuscript against your stated changes. If a change is described but not locatable, the referee marks it unresolved and the paper takes another round.
Resubmission after rejection is a formal appeal
If PRD rejected the paper and you want to argue rather than transfer, the resubmission is treated as a formal appeal. It goes to a Divisional Associate Editor, who reviews the complete editorial file and may act as a super-referee or seek a fresh expert opinion. Appeals rarely overturn scope or significance calls. They work best when you can document a clear, factual referee error.
Tone calibration: PRD reply-to-referee phrasing
The single-specialist culture rewards substance and punishes defensiveness. Here is how the same point reads when it is argued well versus argued badly.
Bad (defensive or vague) | Better (substantive and located) |
|---|---|
"The referee has misunderstood our central result." | "We see how Eq. (14) could be read as the static case. We have rewritten the surrounding text (page 5, lines 10 to 24) to make the dynamical regime explicit." |
"This concern is outside the scope of our paper." | "This is an important question, but it requires a separate treatment of the strong-coupling limit. We now state this boundary explicitly in the conclusion (page 11, lines 2 to 9) and cite Ref. [22] for the complementary regime." |
"We have addressed this in the revised manuscript." | "We have added the convergence study in Sec. IV B (page 7) and the error budget in Table III; the result in Eq. (31) is stable within the quoted uncertainty." |
"Other papers in this area do not report error bars either." | "We agree a quantified uncertainty is needed. Appendix A now reports the statistical and systematic budget, and Fig. 4 shows the lattice-spacing extrapolation." |
"We disagree and have made no change." | "We respectfully disagree, for the following reason: Ref. [12] assumes a fixed background, whereas our Eq. (9) solves the coupled system. We have added one sentence (page 3, line 30) to make this distinction visible to the reader." |
Notice that even the disagreements end with a concrete manuscript change or a precise location. APS asks authors to respond to the points they disagree with as well, not to skip them. A flat "we disagree, no change" reads to a PRD referee as a refusal to engage, and it is the fastest way to lose the goodwill of a single specialist who holds your decision.
The equation, section, and page-line referencing rule
The most common avoidable mistake in a PRD reply is describing a change without saying where it lives. Every response paragraph should end with a pointer the referee can verify in seconds: an equation number (Eq. (27)), a section (Sec. IV B), a figure or table (Fig. 4, Table II), or a page and line range (page 7, lines 20 to 41). Physics papers are dense, so "we clarified this in the methods" is not enough. The referee needs the exact coordinate.
A practical habit: keep two files open while you draft the reply, the marked manuscript and the reply letter, and copy the location into the reply the moment you make each change. If you write the reply after the fact from memory, the locations drift and the referee finds mismatches, which reads as carelessness.
Distinguishing referee text from your response
Make the referee's words and your reply visually separate so the editor and referee can scan the document. The simplest reliable convention in a plain-text or PDF reply is to set the referee's quoted comment in bold or italic, or in a distinct indented block, and your response in normal text immediately below, with a horizontal rule or blank line between each comment. Do not interleave the two in one paragraph.
A reviewer reading a dozen of these letters a month should be able to find your response to Comment 3 in two seconds, not parse a wall of prose to locate where the quote ends and your answer begins.
Three Physical Review D reply patterns we flag before resubmission
Evidence basis. The patterns below come from our pre-submission review work across particle physics, gravitation, and cosmology manuscripts, cross-checked against the APS author guidance on responding to referee reports and the published PRD scope. We did not test PRD's internal editorial system, and APS does not release per-decision data, so these are aggregate observations from manuscripts we reviewed, not a claim about any single submission's referee report. Use this section before you submit if you want to pressure-test your reply against what a single PRD specialist referee actually re-reads.
In our pre-submission review work with Physical Review D submissions, three patterns predict another revision round more reliably than anything else. These are the same failure modes the journal's referees flag on resubmission, and you can test your own reply against each one before you upload.
Generic acknowledgment without a verifiable location. The most common pattern across PRD-targeted replies we review is the response that says "we have addressed this concern" or "this has been clarified" with no equation, section, or page and line. PRD referees re-read the revised manuscript against each change, and an unlocatable change is an unresolved change. The fix is mechanical: every response paragraph ends with a pointer the referee can check, such as Eq. (27), Sec.
IV B, or page 7, lines 20 to 41. We flag this pattern more than any other in Physical Review D replies because authors describe the science correctly but never tell the referee where to look.
A revised number with no convergence or error analysis. For lattice, numerical relativity, and simulation papers, PRD referees treat an undocumented numerical method as an open question. We see this constantly in computational Physical Review D submissions: the author changes a central figure or a numerical result in response to a comment but does not add the lattice-spacing extrapolation, the resolution study, or the statistical and systematic error budget that justifies the new number.
A reply that quotes a revised value in an equation without a quantified uncertainty invites the same comment again. The reply has to carry the convergence study and the error budget into the methods and supplementary material, not just the new number.
Pushback on a derivation argued by tone instead of by equations. Because PRD is single-anonymized and editor-led with subfield specialists, a disagreement on the physics has to be settled on the physics. We regularly review Physical Review D replies where the author challenges a referee's reading of a derivation with rhetoric ("the referee has misunderstood") rather than with the equation that resolves it.
The pattern that works is to name the specific equation, state the assumption the referee may have read in, and point to the line that makes the distinction explicit. A PRD referee who is the lone specialist on your paper will accept a well-argued disagreement and will not accept a dismissive one. Confine pushback to comments where you can document the reason, and concede the rest with a concrete change.
Each pattern is testable against your own reply right now. Check whether your PRD reply names a location for every change before you resubmit.
When a Physical Review D revision can still fail
A revise decision at PRD is not an acceptance, and authors over-read it. Rejection on revision is real: a paper that came back for major revision can still be rejected after the second round if the referee's core objection was about testability or significance and the revision did not close it.
In our pre-submission review work, the revisions most at risk are the ones that fix the cosmetic comments thoroughly while leaving the one structural objection, usually a missing connection to an observable or a missing convergence study, answered with words instead of physics.
Most PRD filtering happens at the referee stage rather than at desk, where third-party estimates put acceptance around 50% to 60% on a correctness-first model and most rejections at the revision stage trace to one unresolved structural objection. So the second round carries real risk. If you cannot point to a specific change that answers the referee's main objection, another round of polite text will not save the paper.
Address the structural objection or, if the rejection was about scope, use the APS transfer service to move the paper to the right Physical Review section or to a HEP venue such as JHEP rather than appeal a scope call you cannot document as a factual error.
Submit If
- The reply is point-by-point, with each referee comment quoted in full, your response, and the exact equation, section, or page and line that changed.
- Every numerical change challenged by a referee carries a convergence study and a quantified statistical and systematic error budget.
- The opening note to the editor summarizes the major changes in one short paragraph.
- A marked manuscript with changes highlighted is uploaded alongside the reply.
- All cited DOIs in the revised reference list are verified clean against Crossref and Retraction Watch.
Readiness check
Run the scan while Physical Review D's requirements are in front of you.
See how this manuscript scores against Physical Review D's requirements before you submit.
Think Twice If
- The reply uses "we have addressed this" language without a locatable change.
- A revised number appears in an equation with no convergence study or error analysis.
- The response pushes back on more than a third of comments without documented evidence.
- The structural objection (missing observable, missing convergence) is answered with prose rather than with new physics.
- You are framing a resubmission-after-rejection as a revision when PRD treats it as a formal appeal to a Divisional Associate Editor.
How long it takes to draft a Physical Review D reply
This is the drafting effort on your side, not the journal's review clock. For the journal's first-decision timing, see the Physical Review D review time page, which owns that question.
Reply activity | Effort | What you produce |
|---|---|---|
Read the referee report and decision letter | a day or two | A clear map of each comment and the editor's disposition |
Cluster comments and plan the revision | half a day | A concede-versus-argue decision per comment |
Run any additional analysis | the bulk of the work | Convergence studies, error budgets, new calculations |
Draft the point-by-point reply | a week or so | Per-comment quote, response, and exact location |
Co-author review of the reply | a few days | Confirmation that every location matches the marked manuscript |
Assemble and resubmit via the APS portal | a day | Manuscript, marked manuscript, and reply uploaded together |
Source: Manusights pre-submission review of PRD-targeted resubmissions, 2025 cohort.
The drafting itself is rarely the long pole. The additional analysis is, especially the convergence studies and error budgets that a single specialist referee will ask for if you skip them, so plan the reply around the physics you still need to produce, not around the writing.
- Manusights pre-submission review corpus (Physical Review D-targeted manuscripts, 2025 cohort)
Frequently asked questions
Write a point-by-point reply to the referee. Open with a short note to the editor summarizing the major changes, then quote each referee comment verbatim, give your response, and cite the exact equation, section, or page and line where you made the change. APS asks authors to respond to every point, including the ones you disagree with, and to upload a marked manuscript with changes highlighted alongside the reply.
PRD uses single-anonymized review. A scientific editor handles your paper and typically consults one to two specialist referees. The editor, not a vote of referees, makes the decision. A resubmission after a rejection is treated as a formal appeal that goes to a Divisional Associate Editor, who can act as a super-referee or seek a fresh expert opinion.
Yes, when the science supports it, but do it on substance. PRD referees are subfield specialists, so a disagreement on a derivation, a numerical method, or an observable has to be argued with equations, a convergence study, or a citation, not with tone. Push back on roughly a third of comments at most, and concede the rest with a concrete manuscript change.
A reply that says we have addressed this concern without pointing to the equation, section, or page and line that changed. PRD referees re-read against the specific change. A generic acknowledgment forces another round because the referee cannot verify the fix, and unverified numerical claims without a convergence or error analysis are the second most common stall.
Sometimes, but rarely on scope or significance. A formal appeal goes to a Divisional Associate Editor who reviews the full editorial file. Appeals work best when you can document a clear, factual referee error. If the rejection was about correctness, testability, or fit with PRC, PRA, or PRB, fix the science or transfer rather than spend the appeal.
Sources
- APS guidance on responding to referee reports (accessed June 2026)
- APS editorial and appeal procedures (accessed June 2026)
- Physical Review D information for reviewers (accessed June 2026)
- Stafford Noble, W. S. (2017). Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Response to Reviewers. PLOS Computational Biology. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005730 (accessed June 2026)
- Bourne, P. E. and Korngreen, A. (2006). Ten Simple Rules for Reviewers. PLOS Computational Biology. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020110 (accessed June 2026)
- How to write a response to peer reviewers. Nature Computational Science (2025). doi:10.1038/s43588-025-00931-5 (accessed June 2026)
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