By name: aistats-author-response description: Use when drafting AISTATS author responses or author-reviewer discussion replies under OpenReview, covering text-only discussion, no-link guidance, no revised-paper upload, anonymity requirements, statistician-reviewer pushback patterns, and decision-focused clarification strategy for theory-plus-experiments papers.
AISTATS Author Response
Use this after AISTATS reviews are released. Reopen the current OpenReview instructions and author-discussion policy before drafting because response mechanics are cycle-specific.
Triage
- Answer concerns that affect correctness, novelty, statistical validity, clarity, reproducibility, or fit for AISTATS.
- Use existing submitted evidence: paper sections, appendices, supplementary material, theorem statements, experiments, checklist entries, and code/data descriptions.
- Keep the reply anonymous. Do not reveal institution, authorship, grants, private URLs, or repository ownership.
- Treat discussion as clarification, not revision. Do not depend on uploading a revised paper or new supplement unless current instructions explicitly allow it.
- If current rules prohibit links, do not use URLs in the discussion. AISTATS 2026 author-reviewer discussion was text-only and links were not allowed.
- Correct factual errors first, then address requests for missing comparisons, uncertainty estimates, proofs, or hyperparameters.
Drafting pattern
- State the decision-critical correction or concession.
- Point to exact submitted evidence.
- Explain the statistical or theoretical consequence.
- Promise a camera-ready wording fix only if it does not add unsupported new claims.
Statistician-reviewer pushback patterns
| Pushback | What it signals | AISTATS-ready fix |
|---|---|---|
| "Assumption A3 seems strong" | The reviewer traced the proof chain | Point to where A3 is verified, weakened, or shown necessary; never dismiss it as standard without a citation |
| "The experiments violate the theorem conditions" | Theory-experiment mismatch spotted | Identify which conclusions survive misspecification and cite the robustness simulation that shows it |
| "Observed rates do not match the bound" | The reviewer compared empirical slopes against theory | Reference the log-log plot, or explain the constant-dominated regime at the tested sample sizes |
| "Comparison with the classical statistical method is missing" | Statistics-literature gap | Anchor to the appendix comparison, or concede and scope a camera-ready clarification |
Response micro-example
Reviewer objection: the minimax claim hides its dependence on dimension d. Reply skeleton:
- Concede that the d-dependence appears only in the appendix constant.
- Quote the exact constant from Theorem 2 so the reviewer need not search.
- Note that the simulation at d = 100 in Figure 4 follows the predicted scaling.
- Offer one camera-ready sentence making the dependence explicit in the main text.
Discussion-phase calibration
- One decision-critical point per reviewer beats exhaustive replies; AISTATS meta-reviewers read for whether the central statistical objection was actually resolved.
- Never paste new theorem statements or fresh proofs into the discussion box; sketch the argument and anchor it in submitted material only.
- Respond early in the window — AISTATS discussion periods are short and reviewers who reply once rarely reply twice.
- Length and formatting norms vary by cycle; recheck the current discussion instructions before sending anything.
Output format
[Priority issue] <reviewer concern>
[Decision dimension] correctness / novelty / statistical validity / clarity / reproducibility
[Draft response] <AISTATS-ready anonymous text>
[Evidence anchor] <paper/appendix/supplement item>
[Forbidden content removed] <links, identity leaks, new unsupported claims>