isca-author-response

ISCA Author Response

ISCA 2026 gave authors a combined **rebuttal/revision period, February 16 to

March 6** — three weeks in which the team could both argue and *change the

paper*. That design rewards teams that treat the window as an engineering sprint

with a triage phase, and punishes teams that spend it composing indignation.

Everything here assumes that verified 2026 structure; the 2027 window's

existence, length, and rules are 待核实 until the new CFP posts.

Day 1-2: triage before any writing or computing

Read all reviews twice: once fast for temperature, once slow building the

objection ledger. Classify every distinct point:

| Class | Definition | Window response |

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

| F — factual error | Reviewer misread something present in the PDF | Quote page/section/figure; one sentence; zero new work |

| E — evidence gap, closable | Missing experiment your infrastructure can run in days | Run it; report in response; fold into revision if permitted |

| E∞ — evidence gap, not closable | Needs silicon, months, or data you lack | Concede scope honestly; state what the existing evidence does cover |

| D — design objection | "This breaks under X" / "cost is understated" | Analyze X concretely; if real, add the limitation; if not, show why |

| P — premise objection | "This problem doesn't matter" | Strongest countermeasure is motivation data; if you have none beyond the paper, one calm paragraph and move on |

| T — taste | "I'd have designed it differently" | Acknowledge once; do not redesign the paper |

Then rank by leverage: an F held by two reviewers outranks an E held by one;

anything a likely champion needs to defend the paper outranks everything else

(isca-review-process explains why the champion is the audience).

Day 2: freeze the experiment plan

Pick at most three new experiments — the ones that convert the highest-leverage

E-class objections into numbers. Assign owners and a hard finish date one week

before window close, leaving prose time. The classic window failure is five

half-finished experiments and a response that promises rather than shows.

window-plan.md
  R2.O3  (E, leverage=high)  "no comparison vs LazyMerge at equal storage"
         -> run: lazymerge @ 18KB/core, full suite; owner: MK; due Feb 27
  R1.O1  (F, leverage=high)  "warm-up unstated"
         -> answer: §5.1 para 2, 50M inst; also add to config table in revision
  R3.O2  (D, leverage=med)   "decay threshold fragile"
         -> run: sweep T in {2K..64K}; expect plateau; owner: JL; due Feb 25
  R3.O5  (T, leverage=low)   "why not epoch-based?"
         -> one paragraph, cite §4.2 rationale; no experiment

Writing the response document

Structure for committee reading, not reviewer combat:

1. Opening block (5-6 lines): thank, then list the concrete changes/results

produced during the window — the things a champion can repeat in the room.

1. Per-objection sections keyed to review IDs, highest-leverage first.

Each: restate the objection in one neutral line, answer with evidence

(number, table row, or PDF pointer), stop.

1. Shared-objection consolidation: answer once, cross-reference the copies —

it shows the committee the objection set is smaller than it looks.

Tone rules that survive contact with real committees: concede real limitations

in plain declarative sentences (concessions buy credibility that transfers to

your rebuttals); never speculate about reviewer expertise or identity; never

claim "all reviewers agree" about anything they don't.

Using the revision half of the window

If the cycle permits an updated PDF (2026's window was named rebuttal/revision):

• Make surgical edits keyed to objections: the missing baseline column, the

config-table row, the limitation paragraph, the clarified walk-through.

• Do not restructure the paper — reviewers re-reading diff mentally against

their memory, and a rewritten paper resets their evaluation instead of

repairing it.

• Maintain a change log mapping edit → objection; if the process provides no

place to submit it, embed the mapping in the response document.

• Keep the paper inside all format rules; a revision that breaks the 11-page

budget converts goodwill into a violation. This is what the half-page of slack

from isca-writing-style was for.

What not to spend the window on

• New contributions. Results beyond the paper's claimed scope read as a

different paper and invite "needs another round of review" — the phrase that

kills borderline papers.

• Rebutting every sentence. A 15-point response to a 3-objection review

buries your leverage. Committees skim; make the skim land the top three.

• Premise litigation at length. One paragraph of motivation defense with

data; more looks defensive and reads worse each repetition.

• Simulator relitigating. If a reviewer distrusts your instrument globally,

the fix is the validation anchor you either have (point to it) or don't

(concede and scope) — not an essay on simulation philosophy.

Window-close checklist

• [ ] Every review ID answered or explicitly consolidated
• [ ] Top-3 objections answered with numbers produced this window
• [ ] All F-class errors corrected with pointers, tone neutral
• [ ] Revision (if permitted) diff-minimal, format-legal, change-mapped
• [ ] A colleague outside the project read the response cold and could state

your three key answers back to you

• [ ] Submitted with margin — the window closes AoE like everything else

The three weeks on a calendar

Using the 2026 window (Feb 16 - Mar 6) as the shape:

| Days | Activity |

|---|---|

| 1-2 | Triage; objection ledger; leverage ranking; no computing yet |

| 2 | Experiment plan frozen: ≤3 runs, owners, due dates |

| 3-12 | Experiments execute; response skeleton drafted in parallel |

| 13-15 | Results in; response written against real numbers |

| 16-18 | Revision edits (if permitted), diff-minimal, format-checked |

| 19-20 | Cold read by an outside colleague; tone pass; consolidation pass |

| 21 | Submit with hours to spare, AoE-checked |

After the window, silence until decisions; outcome handling branches in

isca-review-process, and calendar context lives in isca-workflow. Verified

dates: ../../resources/official-source-map.md (2026-07-08).