jm-rebuttal

R&R Revision & Response (jm-rebuttal)

When to trigger

• You received a JM major/minor revision and need a plan and a response letter
• A reviewer challenged the substantive contribution, relevance, or identification
• You must revise before writing the response (do not draft the letter on an unrevised paper)
• A subsequent round arrived and you need to show movement since the last revision

Sequence: revise first, then respond

JM R&Rs are developmental and often multi-round. Revise the manuscript first; the response letter documents changes that already exist. Lead the work with the Coeditor's decisive concerns — at JM these almost always include the two gatekeeping bars: substantive novelty (compelling new insight, not a new-context replication) and managerial/policy/societal relevance. A revision that polishes peripheral points but leaves a gatekeeping concern unaddressed will not advance.

Build the response letter

• Open with a brief summary of the most important changes and how the paper is stronger on JM's substantive-and-relevance bar.
• Point-by-point: restate each comment, then state the change, with page/line or section pointers to the revised manuscript (remember: no line numbers in the file — cite sections/pages or quote the revised text).
• Quote new text inline so the editor sees the change without hunting.
• Stay anonymized: no author-revealing language anywhere in the letter or revised files; keep any preregistration links anonymized.
• Be candid on disagreements: where you decline a suggestion, explain respectfully with evidence; do not silently ignore a comment.

Address JM-specific concerns head-on

• "Incremental / new-context" → strengthen and foreground the new mechanism, reversal, boundary condition, or decisive magnitude; revise the contribution sentences (see jm-contribution-framing).
• "So what for practice?" → add or sharpen the managerial/policy/societal implications, quantified in real units (lift, CLV, WTP, welfare).
• "Identification is weak" → add the design-appropriate fix (better instrument, parallel-trends evidence, additional experiment, robustness/placebo tests) per jm-data-analysis.
• "Significance without magnitude" → ensure exact p-values, SEs, and effect sizes are reported throughout, in managerial units where possible.
• Scope challenge (too methods-y / too general-management) → re-center the paper on the substantive marketing question and its real-world stakes.

Prepare transparency deliverables

If the revision is heading toward conditional acceptance, line up the JM Dataverse replication packet (data + analysis scripts, or qualitative materials), confirm the Data Availability Statement, and prepare preregistration links and the attestation. Doing this during the R&R avoids a scramble at acceptance.

Checklist

• Manuscript revised before the letter was drafted
• Coeditor's decisive concerns addressed first
• Substantive-novelty and managerial-relevance challenges answered explicitly
• Point-by-point letter with section/page pointers and quoted new text
• Exact p-values, SEs, effect sizes verified throughout after revision
• Identification/robustness additions completed where requested
• Anonymization preserved in letter and files (incl. prereg links)
• Replication packet / Data Availability Statement prepared if nearing acceptance

Anti-patterns

• Letter before revision — promising changes not yet made.
• Cosmetic edits to a gatekeeping (novelty/relevance) concern.
• Defensive non-answers that dodge a reviewer's point.
• Reintroducing identity in the response or revised files.
• Over-claiming new results beyond what the added analysis supports.

Output format

【Revision done first】yes/no
【Coeditor decisive concerns addressed】[...]
【Novelty + relevance answers】[...]
【Identification/robustness additions】[...]
【Exact-statistic check】p / SE / effect size verified post-revision?
【Letter】point-by-point with pointers + quoted text drafted?
【Anonymization】preserved (incl. prereg links)?
【Transparency】JM Dataverse + DAS readiness if nearing acceptance: [...]
【Next step】resubmit via ScholarOne → jm-review-process for the next round