LaTeX Template for Review Responses

This repository provides a simple LaTeX template for writing responses to reviewers, which is typically needed when submitting an article to a scientific journal.

This template is also available on Overleaf.

Usage

In order to use the reviewresponse.cls class in your document, simply include the following line at the top of your LaTeX document

\documentclass{reviewresponse}

On GitHub, you can simply click on "Use this template".

Commands

The following commands are provided by the package.
If you are using TeXstudio, there exists an autocomplete file (.cwl) for the reviewresponse.cls package, which can be found here.

Document Metadata

You can use the following commands to specify the metadata of the submitted document. Place these commands before \begin{document}.

\title{Title of the Manuscript}
\author{Author One\affil{1}, Author Two\affil{1,*} and Author Three\affil{2}}
\affiliation{
    \affil{1} Affiliation 1\\
    \affil{2} Affiliation 2
}
\journal{Name of the Journal}
\manuscript{ID-of-the-Manuscript}
\editorname{Name of the Editor}

Editor and Reviewers

\editor
\reviewer

These commands start a new editor and reviewer. The typical usage is

\begin{document}
...
\editor
Response to the editor

\reviewer
Response to the first reviewer

\reviewer
Response to the second reviewer

Comments and Responses

\begin{generalcomment}
...
\end{generalcomment}

The generalcomment environment is meant for general comments given by the editor and reviewers.

\begin{revcomment}
...
\end{revcomment}

The revcomment environment is meant for the individual comments made by the reviewers. They are automatically numbered.

It also accepts optional arguments, which are directly passed to the underlying tcolorbox environment. This is useful, if you want to add some arguments in specific situations, e.g., the breakable keyword for very long comments.

\begin{revresponse}[Optional Parameter]
...
\end{revresponse}

The revresponse environment is meant for responses to the individual comments of the reviewers and editor. The optional parameter changes the text on the first line. By default, this text is "Thank you for the comment.".

The concludingresponse environment is meant for the final response to the editor or reviewer. The optional parameter changes the text in the header of the tcolorbox environment. By default, this text is "Concluding Response"; the value of the optional parameter is added to this text.

\begin{concludingresponse}[to the Editor]
...
\end{concludingresponse}

Changes

\begin{changes}
...
\end{changes}

The changes environment is meant for indicating changes that you made to your manuscript. It sets the content in a box in order to highlight it for the reviewers.

Bibliography

The reviewresponse package supports the use of biblatex for references. Simply include biblatex and use the \cite command in your response.

If you want to print specific references, e.g., at the end of the response to one particular comment, you can use the \printpartbibliography command.

\printpartbibliography{bibkey1,bibkey2,...}

Customization

You can customize the appearance of all the boxes in the reviewresponse.cls file.

If you only want to change the colors of the boxes, you need to redefine the following colors. The shown values are the defaults.

\definecolor{colorcommentfg}{RGB}{0,63,87}  % color of the title in the comment box
\definecolor{colorcommentbg}{HTML}{e0f0f6} % color of the background of the comment box
\definecolor{colorcommentframe}{RGB}{0,112,155} % color of the frame of the comment box

\colorlet{colorchangebg}{black!2} % color of the background of the changes box
\colorlet{colorchangeframe}{black!20} % color of the frame of the changes box

\colorlet{colorconcludingresponsefg}{black!80} % color of the title in the concluding response box
\colorlet{colorconcludingresponsebg}{black!2} % color of the background of the concluding response box
\colorlet{colorconcludingresponseframe}{black!20} % color of the frame of the concluding response box

Options

The class has the following options, which can be set when setting the \documentclass, i.e., like \documentclass[option=value]{reviewresponse}. All unknown options will be passed on to the underlying scrartcl class.

• revnumtocomment: (bool)
  If set to true, the reviewer number will be put in front of the comment number, i.e., it will say "Comment 2.3" for the third comment of the second reviewer.

Contribute

Thank you for considering contributing to this project. You should be able to find all the information you need at CONTRIBUTING.md.