Ieeesp author response

IEEE S&P Author Response

Use this in two situations that S&P runs differently from most venues: the short rebuttal offered only to papers that survive the first round, and the Revise response, a full re-submission against a written expectations summary. The 2027 Cycle 2 rebuttal window was five days — reviews out Feb 11, rebuttal due Feb 16, 2027 (checked 2026-07-08) — so the work is mostly done before reviews arrive or it does not get done.

Pre-draft before reviews land

Between the early-reject notice and review release, write the skeleton:

• The three objections your own red-team read would raise (usually: an adaptive-attacker gap, a threat-model realism question, a measurement-validity question).
• The exact section/figure references answering each.
• The ethics documentation block: disclosure dates, vendor responses, IRB determination ID — assembled, dated, ready to paste.

Triage the review set in the first hour

Objection type	Response strategy	Win probability
Misreading of mechanism or threat model	Quote the submission, cite section, restate in two lines	High
Missing experiment you actually have	Point to appendix/artifact location	High
Adaptive-attack gap that is real	Concede scope precisely; state what the evaluated adversary covers	Medium — honesty is scored
Threat-model taste ("attacker unrealistic")	Ground in incidents/measurements, not adjectives	Medium
Ethics record question	Dates, IDs, named approvals — documentation only	Binary: docs exist or not
Fundamental novelty dispute	One paragraph on the delta; do not relitigate	Low — spend words elsewhere

Spend the budget in proportion to win probability times decision weight, and answer every reviewer at least once — an ignored reviewer in the post-rebuttal discussion is a vote you conceded.

Rules of engagement in the rebuttal

• Answer the objection actually written, not the friendlier one nearby.
• New experimental results: follow the current cycle's instructions on whether new numbers are allowed (待核实 each cycle); when unclear, phrase as verification of existing claims rather than new contributions.
• Never argue that a security concern "is out of scope" without saying whose scope — restate the threat model's boundary and why it is the right one.
• Keep the anonymous voice; disclosure specifics stay venue-neutral.
• No links out of HotCRP unless the CFP explicitly permits them.

Rebuttal skeleton

Common response (all reviewers):
  C1. Threat model boundary: <2 lines + §ref>
  C2. Adaptive-adversary coverage: <what was evaluated, §ref>
  C3. Ethics record: disclosed <date>, IRB <id/waiver>, data handling <§ref>

Reviewer A:
  A1 [misreading] The attack does not require <X>; see §3.2 ¶2.
  A2 [evidence]  The <n>-target evaluation is in Table 4; per-target
      breakdown in Appendix C.
Reviewer B:
  B1 [concession] Correct: we do not evaluate <adversary class>. Our claims
      are scoped to <boundary> (§2); extending is future work.
→ ≤ <current cycle's length cap 待核实>; every point ends at a §/Table/date.

Responding to a Revise decision

The Revise summary of expectations is a contract, not a suggestion list:

1. Extract each expectation into a numbered ledger; get co-author agreement on the interpretation of each before doing work.
2. Deliver every item or explicitly negotiate the ones you contest — silence on an expectation reads as failure to meet it.
3. Write a change document mapping expectation → change → location, so the returning reviewers can verify in minutes.
4. Do not add major unrequested material; new claims reopen review scope.
5. Confirm on the live cycle pages which cycle receives the revision and its deadline (待核实 — the 2027 mechanics were not published at check time).

Failure modes seen at this venue

• Spending the five days on the novelty dispute instead of the fixable evidence objections.
• Answering an ethics question with philosophy instead of a timeline.
• Treating Revise as "minor revisions plus a cover letter" — it is re-reviewed as a major revision against the written expectations.
• Missing that the rebuttal's real audience is the reviewer discussion that follows it: write lines a sympathetic reviewer can quote.

Output format

[Mode] rebuttal (5-day) / revise response
[Ledger] <n> objections: misreading <n> · evidence <n> · taste <n> · ethics <n>
[Concessions] <what is honestly out of evaluated scope>
[Documentation block] disclosure dates ✓/✗ · IRB id ✓/✗ · artifact refs ✓/✗
[Word budget plan] <allocation across reviewers>
[Open 待核实] new-results policy / length cap / revise target cycle