atc-author-response

ATC Author Response

ATC gives you two distinct writing moments after review, and they have different jobs. The rebuttal (a short, roughly one-page window during round two) is for correcting misreadings and supplying a measurement a reviewer said was missing. The description of changes (after a conditional accept, for the shepherd) is a point-by-point record proving every required revision was made. Confusing the two — arguing in the shepherd round, or over-promising in the rebuttal — is the classic failure.

The rebuttal (round two, ~1 page)

Its job is narrow and its space is tiny, so triage ruthlessly:

• Correct factual misreadings first — a reviewer who misread the testbed, the baseline, or the claim can be moved by a precise correction with a pointer to the section/figure.
• Supply the one number that matters — if a reviewer said "no tail latency" or "no matched-cost comparison," and you have or can add it, state the result concisely. Systems reviewers move on evidence, not on rhetoric.
• Concede cleanly what you cannot fix this cycle — a crisp "correct; here is the honest bound" buys more credibility than defending an overclaim.
• Do not argue taste — "the reviewer underrates the contribution" changes nothing; the PC discussion decides.

Structure it as reviewer/point → response, lead with the highest-impact corrections, and never introduce unsupported new claims (which read as scope creep). Keep double-blind: the rebuttal must not reveal identity.

The description of changes (shepherd round)

After a conditional accept, a PC member shepherds the paper: final acceptance depends on the required revisions landing. Write the change record as a contract:

• One row per required change: reviewer/shepherd request → what you changed → where (section, figure, table) → the resulting text or result.
• Make or explicitly decline every requested change. A silently skipped required change is the fastest way to stall a conditional accept; if you decline, give the reason and the evidence.
• Point to concrete artifacts of the change — the new figure, the added experiment, the revised paragraph — not a promise to do it.
• Keep the shepherd's scope. The shepherd enforces the required revisions, not a new round of wishes; do not reopen settled scope or add unrequested claims that invite fresh review.