Cover Letters and Reviewer Responses
Two small documents carry a paper through publication. The cover letter opens the conversation with an editor. The point-by-point response keeps it going with reviewers. Neither reports new science, yet both decide whether the science gets read. This page covers the shape of each and gives a worked skeleton you can copy. It complements the peer-review section of scientific writing, which frames the review process as a whole; here we work the two letters in detail.
The submission cover letter#
The cover letter has one reader, the handling editor, and one purpose, to help that editor decide whether to send your paper out for review. The editor often knows your field less well than your eventual readers do, so write in plain English with no acronyms. Three parts do the work.
Summary. State what the paper shows, leading with the finding and its direction and size. This is not the abstract pasted in. The abstract is for researchers who chose to read it; the summary is for an editor who did not, so it needs one line of context the abstract assumes and simpler words throughout. Keep it to about 150 words.
Justification. Answer why the paper suits this journal, which really means why this journal’s readers will want it. Name the audiences concretely, the specialists, the people who could reuse your method or data, adjacent fields, applied readers. Do not stretch to audiences who genuinely will not care; overreach costs you credibility. Keep it to about 150 words.
Box-ticking. Confirm the required statements in a sentence or two. The work is original, not published elsewhere, and not under review at another journal. All authors approve the submission and declare any conflicts. Add two or three suggested reviewers with a one-line reason each, and note anyone who should be excluded and why. Avoid recent co-authors, your own institution, and former supervisors.
A worked skeleton#
Dear Editors,
Please consider our paper, ‘[TITLE]’, as a research article for [JOURNAL].
Summary. [One paragraph: the finding first, with direction and magnitude, then one line of context and one line on why it matters.]
Why [JOURNAL]? [Two or three concrete audiences who will want to read this, ordered from the specific result to the broad implication.]
This work is original, has not been published elsewhere, and is not under consideration at any other journal. All authors approve the submission and declare no conflicts of interest.
As potential referees we suggest [Name, affiliation, email, one-line reason] and [Name, affiliation, email, one-line reason].
Yours sincerely, [NAME, on behalf of all authors]
An example summary#
We fit a censoring-aware model to 812 contact-tracing pairs and estimate that 48% (95% CI 39 to 56) of transmission for pathogen X occurs before symptom onset. Because so much spread precedes symptoms, isolating only symptomatic cases leaves roughly half of onward infection untouched. The result quantifies why symptom-based control alone did not hold outbreaks of this pathogen and gives readers a number to plug into their own models.
The point-by-point response to reviewers#
Reviews almost always come back asking for revision, and the productive reply is a response that answers every comment on its own terms. Treat the exchange as a conversation and treat the criticism as data about how a careful reader received the paper. Four habits carry a response.
Reproduce each comment in full, then answer directly underneath it, so the editor never has to hunt for what you are replying to. State exactly what changed and where, by section and line or figure number, so a reviewer can check the edit in seconds. Stay courteous even when a comment misreads the work; a defensive tone reads worse than the original objection. When you disagree, say so and explain with evidence rather than deflecting, then let the editor weigh it.
Quote your own revised text in the response where it helps, and thank reviewers once at the top rather than after every point.
A worked skeleton#
We thank the reviewers for their careful reading. We reproduce each comment below in italics, followed by our response and the specific change.
Reviewer 1
Comment 1.1. The incubation-period estimate ignores right truncation, which will bias it downward.
Response. We agree. We refit the delay distribution with a truncation-aware likelihood and updated the estimate accordingly. See Methods, paragraph 3 (page 6, lines 122 to 138) and the revised Table 2.
Comment 1.2. The claim of causal effect is too strong for observational data.
Response. We have softened the wording from “causes” to “is associated with” throughout the Results and added a sentence on residual confounding to the Discussion (page 11, lines 240 to 246).
Comment 1.3. The authors should drop the sensitivity analysis in the supplement.
Response. We would prefer to keep it. The analysis shows the main estimate is stable across three plausible reporting-delay assumptions, which speaks to the reviewer’s earlier concern about bias. We have added one sentence pointing readers to it (page 8, line 175) and defer to the editor on whether to retain it.
An example disagreement#
Comment. The reproduction number should be estimated with method A rather than method B.
Response. We chose method B because method A assumes a fixed generation interval, which our own delay estimates (Aim 1) show is not met for this pathogen. To check that the choice does not drive our conclusion, we reran the analysis with method A and report both in the revised supplement (Table S4); the estimates agree within the credible intervals. We have added a sentence to the Methods explaining the choice (page 7, lines 150 to 154).
Why it matters#
An editor who can restate your finding in one sentence is an editor who sends the paper out for review. A reviewer who can see exactly what you changed, and why, is a reviewer who signs off. The craft in both letters is the same, make the reader’s job easy and answer the actual question, and it is the same craft that carries a career of revisions.