ieeesp-author-response

IEEE S&P Author Response

Use this in two situations that S&P runs differently from most venues: the

short rebuttal offered only to papers that survive the first round, and

the Revise response, a full re-submission against a written expectations

summary. The 2027 Cycle 2 rebuttal window was five days — reviews out

Feb 11, rebuttal due Feb 16, 2027 (checked 2026-07-08) — so the work is

mostly done before reviews arrive or it does not get done.

Pre-draft before reviews land

Between the early-reject notice and review release, write the skeleton:

• The three objections your own red-team read would raise (usually: an

adaptive-attacker gap, a threat-model realism question, a

measurement-validity question).

• The exact section/figure references answering each.
• The ethics documentation block: disclosure dates, vendor responses,

IRB determination ID — assembled, dated, ready to paste.

Triage the review set in the first hour

| Objection type | Response strategy | Win probability |

|---|---|---|

| Misreading of mechanism or threat model | Quote the submission, cite section, restate in two lines | High |

| Missing experiment you actually have | Point to appendix/artifact location | High |

| Adaptive-attack gap that is real | Concede scope precisely; state what the evaluated adversary covers | Medium — honesty is scored |

| Threat-model taste ("attacker unrealistic") | Ground in incidents/measurements, not adjectives | Medium |

| Ethics record question | Dates, IDs, named approvals — documentation only | Binary: docs exist or not |

| Fundamental novelty dispute | One paragraph on the delta; do not relitigate | Low — spend words elsewhere |

Spend the budget in proportion to win probability times decision weight, and

answer every reviewer at least once — an ignored reviewer in the

post-rebuttal discussion is a vote you conceded.

Rules of engagement in the rebuttal

• Answer the objection actually written, not the friendlier one nearby.
• New experimental results: follow the current cycle's instructions on

whether new numbers are allowed (待核实 each cycle); when unclear, phrase

as verification of existing claims rather than new contributions.

• Never argue that a security concern "is out of scope" without saying whose

scope — restate the threat model's boundary and why it is the right one.

• Keep the anonymous voice; disclosure specifics stay venue-neutral.
• No links out of HotCRP unless the CFP explicitly permits them.

Rebuttal skeleton

Common response (all reviewers):
  C1. Threat model boundary: <2 lines + §ref>
  C2. Adaptive-adversary coverage: <what was evaluated, §ref>
  C3. Ethics record: disclosed <date>, IRB <id/waiver>, data handling <§ref>

Reviewer A:
  A1 [misreading] The attack does not require <X>; see §3.2 ¶2.
  A2 [evidence]  The <n>-target evaluation is in Table 4; per-target
      breakdown in Appendix C.
Reviewer B:
  B1 [concession] Correct: we do not evaluate <adversary class>. Our claims
      are scoped to <boundary> (§2); extending is future work.
→ ≤ <current cycle's length cap 待核实>; every point ends at a §/Table/date.

Responding to a Revise decision

The Revise summary of expectations is a contract, not a suggestion list:

1. Extract each expectation into a numbered ledger; get co-author agreement

on the interpretation of each before doing work.

1. Deliver every item or explicitly negotiate the ones you contest — silence

on an expectation reads as failure to meet it.

1. Write a change document mapping expectation → change → location, so the

returning reviewers can verify in minutes.

1. Do not add major unrequested material; new claims reopen review scope.
2. Confirm on the live cycle pages which cycle receives the revision and its

deadline (待核实 — the 2027 mechanics were not published at check time).

Failure modes seen at this venue

• Spending the five days on the novelty dispute instead of the fixable

evidence objections.

• Answering an ethics question with philosophy instead of a timeline.
• Treating Revise as "minor revisions plus a cover letter" — it is re-reviewed

as a major revision against the written expectations.

• Missing that the rebuttal's real audience is the reviewer discussion

that follows it: write lines a sympathetic reviewer can quote.

Output format

[Mode] rebuttal (5-day) / revise response
[Ledger] <n> objections: misreading <n> · evidence <n> · taste <n> · ethics <n>
[Concessions] <what is honestly out of evaluated scope>
[Documentation block] disclosure dates ✓/✗ · IRB id ✓/✗ · artifact refs ✓/✗
[Word budget plan] <allocation across reviewers>
[Open 待核实] new-results policy / length cap / revise target cycle