How to Answer Reviewer Comments About Unclear Motivation and Insufficient Problem Importance

Problem

Reviewers often write: “The authors’ statement does not convince me; I am not convinced that this problem is real and important.” This challenges the paper’s overall motivation rather than a specific experiment.

Undesirable Reply

Many authors respond with a generic sentence such as “Thank you for the reminder. We will repeat the abstract or introduction and emphasize the importance of the problem again in the revised version.” This merely restates existing text and does not strengthen the persuasive power of the motivation.

Reviewers actually care about:

Whether the problem truly exists.

In which scenarios the problem occurs.

The consequences of leaving the problem unsolved.

Why the paper’s method can address the problem.

Whether the experiments validate the problem’s significance.

Recommended Reply

A better response uses a concrete application scenario and describes the cost of not solving the problem.

Thank you for the reminder. We realize that the motivation description in the current version is not specific enough. We will add a concrete scenario: in the XXX setting, if the XXX issue remains unresolved, the system will suffer XXX consequences, incurring XXX costs. We will also clarify how our proposed XXX mechanism mitigates this bottleneck, forming a clear logical loop among problem motivation, method design, and experimental validation.

Core Reply Strategy

Instead of repeatedly saying “This problem is important” or “Existing work also addresses this problem,” answer three key questions.

1. Where does the problem appear?

Provide a specific scenario, e.g., “In the XXX task, models often encounter XXX situation.”

2. What is the cost of not solving it?

Performance degradation

Inference errors

Increased cost

Reduced robustness

Poor user experience

Difficult deployment

3. How does the paper address this problem?

Connect motivation to method, e.g., “Because of the XXX bottleneck, we design the XXX mechanism and validate its effectiveness through XXX experiments.”

This demonstrates a complete logical chain: problem → method → experiments.

One‑Sentence Summary

Use concrete use cases and explain the cost of leaving the problem unsolved instead of merely rephrasing the abstract to make the motivation more convincing.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/MLNLP-World/Paper-Rebuttal-Tips