Eurosys author response

EuroSys Author Response

Use this once EuroSys reviews arrive, or when a revision decision lands. The decisive EuroSys fact: every submission ends as accept, reject, or a one-shot revision offer (EuroSys 2026/2027 CFPs, rendered 2026-07-08). A response is not just damage control — it is the input that decides which of the three bins the PC discussion puts you in. Rebuttal mechanics (window length, word caps, whether a response phase exists at all in the current round) are set per cycle in HotCRP — 待核实 against the round's own instructions before drafting.

Read the reviews as a bin-sorting problem

Review pattern	Likely bin	Response goal
Positive scores, factual misreadings	Accept-adjacent	Correct the record crisply; give the champion ammunition
"Promising but evaluation incomplete"	Revision candidate	Show the missing experiment is bounded and specific
Disputed novelty or contribution	Contested	Name the delta against the exact cited system
Fundamental design objection	Reject-adjacent	Concede scope honestly; salvage what is defensible

The revision-candidate row matters most at this venue: reviewers who believe the fix is enumerable can argue for a revision offer instead of a reject, and the condition list they write becomes your contract.

Drafting rules for systems reviewers

• Lead with the one correction that changes a score, not with thanks.
• Quote the paper by section and figure number; EuroSys reviewers re-open the PDF.
• Answer measurement objections with the measurement's own terms: workload, hardware, baseline version, repetition count — not adjectives.
• Never promise results you have not already produced; a EuroSys revision offer will convert vague promises into explicit conditions you must then meet.
• Stay anonymous. The double-blind contract holds through the response phase.

Response skeleton

R2's central concern: the comparison against <baseline> uses its default config.
- Fact: §5.2 tunes <baseline> per the authors' published guidance (Fig. 7 caption).
- New clarification: at the tuned setting, the gap is 1.8x, not the 3x headline;
  the 3x case is the untuned default, which §5.2 labels as such.
- Text change if accepted/revised: promote the tuned number to the abstract.
Minor points: [R1-a] typo confirmed. [R3-b] the trace is public; link withheld
under double-blind, provenance stated in §4.1.

If the outcome is a one-shot revision

The offer arrives with a list of necessary conditions — extra analysis, experiments, or comparisons that substantiate the claims. Treat it like a shepherded contract with a hard deadline: the next EuroSys submission round.

1. Convert each condition into a task with an owner and a machine reservation.
2. Decide within a week whether every condition is physically satisfiable before that round's paper gate; declining early beats failing late.
3. Write the revision note as condition → change → location-in-paper, one row per condition, so the returning reviewers can verify without rereading everything.
4. Do not smuggle in a new contribution; the revision is judged on the list, and scope creep reads as instability.

A revision accepted at the following round is presented at the edition it lands in — plan travel and camera-ready effort accordingly (see eurosys-workflow).

Word-budget allocation

Whatever cap the round sets, spend it in this ratio:

Share	Spend it on
~50%	The single score-moving objection, answered with evidence
~25%	Factual corrections that change how reviews read each other
~15%	The most likely revision conditions, pre-scoped and bounded
~10%	Minor points, batched one line each with review IDs

Resist symmetric per-reviewer allocation: the PC discussion is one conversation, not four, and the meta-question it settles is "does the author team understand what is actually wrong?"

Timeline discipline

• Draft the bin-sort within 24 hours of reviews landing; the first reading under emotion misclassifies severity in both directions.
• Circulate the score-moving answer to all authors before polishing minor points — co-author disagreement about the central concession is the thing you cannot fix on deadline morning.
• If the round runs reviewer-author discussion rather than a one-shot rebuttal (待核实 per round), answer early; late replies reach reviewers who have already argued their position in the PC thread.
• Keep a copy of exactly what was submitted; a later revision offer will be interpreted against the rebuttal's promises.

What sinks responses here

• Arguing taste ("we believe the design is elegant") instead of evidence.
• Burying the score-moving answer under ten minor-point replies.
• Disputing a reviewer's competence — the PC discussion is a room of their peers.
• Treating a revision offer as a soft accept; unmet conditions produce a reject and the same-season resubmission ban that follows it.

Output format

[Bin estimate] accept-adjacent / revision candidate / contested / reject-adjacent
[Score-moving issue] <the one objection worth most of the word budget>
[Fact corrections] <misreading -> section/figure evidence>
[Revision-condition plan] <condition -> task -> feasible by next round? yes/no>
[Anonymity check] passed / issues