The email says "major revisions required," attaches three reviews, and at least one reviewer seems to have disliked everything including your font. Most authors read it once, feel terrible for a week, and then respond defensively or not at all. This is a waste of the best news you have received: an invitation to revise means the editor thinks the paper can make it. Journals do not spend reviewer goodwill on papers they intend to reject. What happens next is substantially in your control.
First: the 48-hour rule
Read the reviews once, then close the file for two days. Every author reads round one as an attack; on the second reading, most comments turn out to be reasonable, some are gifts, and only a few are genuinely wrong. Never draft responses on day one — day-one drafts are how authors talk journals out of accepting them.
Triage every comment into three piles
Number every distinct point in every review (R1.1, R1.2, R2.1 …), then sort:
- Agree and do. The majority, usually. Clarifications, missing citations, additional analysis that is genuinely feasible. These comments improve the paper; say so, do them, and report exactly what changed and where.
- Agree in principle, cannot fully do. The reviewer wants a second dataset, a longer study, an experiment your resources cannot support. Do not pretend; do not ignore. Do the feasible version, acknowledge the limitation explicitly in the manuscript, and explain the constraint honestly in the response.
- Respectfully disagree. Sometimes a reviewer misread, or is simply wrong. You are allowed to push back — once, with evidence, and without heat. Cite the line in your manuscript, the literature, or the data. If a misreading occurred, treat it as a signal your writing was unclear and improve the sentence anyway.
A response that agrees with everything reads as spineless; one that fights everything reads as unrevisable. Editors trust the mix.
The response document that editors love
For every comment, use the same three-part block:
Comment (R2.3): Quote the reviewer's comment in full. Response: What you did and why — or why not, with evidence. Changes: Exact location — "Section 4.2, page 11, lines 8–19, revised as follows: …"
Quote the changed text in the response document itself, so no one has to hunt through the manuscript. Make the editor's decision effortless: the goal is that they can verify your revision without reopening your paper at all.
Three rules of tone throughout: thank reviewers once, sincerely, at the top (not after every comment — it reads as flattery); never write "as clearly stated in the manuscript" (if it were clear, the comment would not exist); never let frustration into the text (the reviewer will read your response, and they vote again).
When reviewers contradict each other
R1 wants the section expanded; R3 wants it cut. Do not silently pick one. Flag it to the editor in your cover letter, state which direction you took and why, and offer the alternative. Contradictions are the editor's job to referee — visibly handing the decision back is correct, not weak.
If the decision is reject
Rejection with reviews is material. The comments are a free, expert diagnosis of exactly what the next journal's reviewers will also notice. Fix the substance before resubmitting elsewhere — the fastest way to two rejections is sending the same weaknesses to a second journal unchanged.
Reviewer-response support is part of ResearchGiri's publication service: triaging the comments, planning feasible revisions, and drafting the response document. If a review has knocked the wind out of you, bring it to us before you reply.