From ier-skills
Structures response strategy and revision plan for International Economic Review (IER) decision letters and referee reports. Triages comments into fix/address/costly/misreading buckets.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/ier-skills:ier-rebuttalThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- An IER R&R (or major/minor revision) letter arrived and you need a response plan
IER reviews are rigor-gated and theory-leaning, so the comments that must be resolved are usually about correctness and generality, not framing. Triage every comment into one of four buckets before writing a word of response:
| Bucket | What it is | Response posture |
|---|---|---|
| Must-fix (correctness) | A genuine error, an undefended load-bearing assumption, an identification hole, a gap in a proof | Fix fully; show the fix in the paper AND summarize it in the letter |
| Must-address (generality) | "Does this survive weaker assumptions / a different specification?" | Run it; report the result honestly (including if it bounds the headline) |
| Reasonable-but-costly | A check the referee would like that adds length/effort | Do the high-value ones; for the rest, explain the trade-off respectfully |
| Misreading / disagreement | The referee misunderstood, or is wrong on the merits | Disagree with evidence and courtesy; never just assert |
IER's broad readership means a paper can draw referees from different subfields who weight things differently — a theory referee may want the proof tightened while an empirical referee wants more robustness, and they may even disagree on what the paper is for. When referees split, do not average their demands; instead, identify the editor's synthesis (the editor's letter usually adjudicates) and align the revision to it. If the editor has not adjudicated, address both demands but make explicit in the letter how you reconciled them — e.g., "Referee 1 asked for a weaker assumption; Referee 2 asked for an additional specification; the revised Section 3 does both, and they are mutually consistent because...". Showing you can hold both perspectives is itself persuasive at a general-interest journal.
A referee writes: "The uniqueness proof is incomplete." This is a must-fix (correctness). The wrong response promises to "clarify in revision." The right IER response completes the proof in the appendix, states in the letter exactly where ("Uniqueness now proved in Appendix B.2 under Assumption 3; the condition is interpreted in Section 2.4"), and notes that the comparative statics in Section 4 rely only on the now-established uniqueness. The referee can re-check in one click, sees the gap is genuinely closed, and the correctness objection — the kind that sinks IER papers — is retired cleanly.
An IER referee re-reads the revision to verify the fixes, so the response letter's job is to make re-checking as fast as possible. Two practices do most of the work: quote the comment verbatim before responding (so the referee does not hunt for context), and give an exact pointer — section, page, equation, or appendix label — for every change. "We have addressed this" is not a response; "Uniqueness is now proved in Appendix B.2; the new Section 2.4 interprets the condition" is. The faster a referee can confirm each fix, the faster the paper moves, and the more goodwill you accumulate for the comments you choose to push back on.
The strongest revisions concede the minor and reasonable points quickly and graciously, reserving disagreement for the one or two comments that genuinely misread the paper or are wrong on the merits — and even then, disagree with evidence, not assertion. An author who fights every comment reads as defensive and burns the editor's patience; an author who concedes the small things and defends the essential things with proof reads as a careful scholar. At a rigor journal where the editor often adjudicates substance, that posture is itself persuasive.
ier-literature-positioning), surfaced in the response.Each pattern maps to a concrete change shown in the paper and summarized in the letter — never to a bare promise.
【Journal】International Economic Review
【Skill】ier-rebuttal
【Decision】R&R (major/minor) / reject-resubmit / split
【Triage】comments sorted: must-fix / must-address / costly / misreading
【Correctness fixes】each shown in the paper + summarized in the letter? [Y/N]
【Honest movement】any check that moved the result reported and bounded? [Y/N]
【Disagreements】evidence-backed, courteous, limited to key hills? [Y/N]
【Editor's decisive issues】answered prominently? [Y/N]
【Length】revision within ≤50pp (added material to online appendix)? [Y/N]
【Next step】resubmit via Editorial Express; update replication deposit if analyses changed
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin ier-skillsAnticipates referee objections before submitting an IER manuscript. Maps likely objections by archetype (theory, quantitative, econometric, applied micro, empirical) and advises on pre-emption strategies.
Structures the response-to-referees letter and revision plan for an Economic Journal decision letter (R&R or reject-with-encouragement). Does not redo the analysis; route to other ecj skills for that.
Plans and drafts a point-by-point response letter and revision strategy for JEEA manuscript decisions (R&R, major/minor revision). Prioritizes co-editor requests, referee comments, and keeps replication package in sync.