Q: How to address reviewer comments accurately?
The reviewers wanted a comparison with recent findings from other related studies, (not necessarily the same but working with similar problems) in the Results and Discussion section. To this, the action taken by the authors was that we replaced the old references cited in the manuscript with the recent ones at a few places, and at other places we cited additional recent references relevant to our work. The reviewers have asked for a second revision and have commented that the new references cited at appropriate places are more or less similar and make no attempt to describe the obtained results in light of added information.
How do we respond to this comment?
As the reviewers have mentioned, you need to not just provide references to the findings from other related studies, but also discuss your findings in relation to them: how your results are different from those, how your research builds on results from those studies, and so on. Preferably, this should be done in the Discussion section.
You should make these changes in the current round of revision in addition to the changes already made. In your response to the reviewers’ comments, you could explain that you have added a paragraph in the Discussion section discussing your findings in the light of recent research on similar problems. If needed, for the benefit of the reviewers, you could highlight this section or add comments within the text against these – to show that you have addressed the comments this time.
Here is a checklist on how to respond to a revise and resubmit decision from a journal that you might find useful: 10 steps to a successful revision.
All the best for your next (and hopefully final) submission!
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