LaTeX Template for Review Responses

This repository provides a simple LaTeX template for writing responses to
reviewers, which is typically needed when submitting an article to a scientific
journal.

This template is also available on
Overleaf.

Usage

In order to use the reviewresponse.cls class in your document, simply include
the following line at the top of your LaTeX document

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\documentclass{reviewresponse}

On GitHub, you can simply click on "Use this template".

Commands

The following commands are provided by the package.
If you are using TeXstudio, there exists an
autocomplete file (.cwl) for the reviewresponse.cls package, which can be
found here.

Document Metadata

You can use the following commands to specify the metadata of the submitted
document.
Place these commands before \begin{document}.

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\title{Title of the Manuscript}
\author{Author One\affil{1}, Author Two\affil{1,*} and Author Three\affil{2}}
\affiliation{
    \affil{1} Affiliation 1\\
    \affil{2} Affiliation 2
}
\journal{Name of the Journal}
\manuscript{ID-of-the-Manuscript}
\editorname{Name of the Editor}

Editor and Reviewers

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\editor
\reviewer

These commands start a new editor and reviewer.
The typical usage is

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\begin{document}
...
\editor
Response to the editor

\reviewer
Response to the first reviewer

\reviewer
Response to the second reviewer

Comments and Responses

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\begin{generalcomment}
...
\end{generalcomment}

The generalcomment environment is meant for general comments given by the
editor and reviewers.

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\begin{revcomment}
...
\end{revcomment}

The revcomment environment is meant for the individual comments made by the
reviewers.
They are automatically numbered.

It also accepts optional arguments, which are directly passed to the underlying
tcolorbox environment.
This is useful, if you want to add some arguments in specific situations, e.g.,
the breakable keyword for very long comments.

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\begin{revresponse}[Optional Parameter]
...
\end{revresponse}

The revresponse environment is meant for responses to the individual comments
of the reviewers and editor.
The optional parameter changes the text on the first line.
By default, this text is "Thank you for the comment.".

The concludingresponse environment is meant for the final response to the editor or reviewer.
The optional parameter changes the text in the header of the tcolorbox environment.
By default, this text is "Concluding Response"; the value of the optional parameter is added to this text.

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\begin{concludingresponse}[to the Editor]
...
\end{concludingresponse}

Changes

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\begin{changes}
...
\end{changes}

The changes environment is meant for indicating changes that you made to your
manuscript.
It sets the content in a box in order to highlight it for the reviewers.

Bibliography

The reviewresponse package supports the use of biblatex for references.
Simply include biblatex and use the \cite command in your response.

If you want to print specific references, e.g., at the end of the response to
one particular comment, you can use the \printpartbibliography command.

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\printpartbibliography{bibkey1,bibkey2,...}

Customization

You can customize the appearance of all boxes and the title page in the
reviewresponse.cls file.
However, some basic properties can also easily be customized in the main
document.

Colors

If you want to change the colors of the boxes, you need to redefine the
following colors, e.g., using \definecolor or \colorlet.
The shown values are the defaults.

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\colorlet{colorcommentfg}{black}  % color of the text in the comment box
\definecolor{colorcommentframe}{HTML}{005374} % color of the frame and title of the comment box
\colorlet{colorcommentbg}{colorcommentframe!2} % color of the background of the comment box

\definecolor{colorchangeframe}{HTML}{006622} % color of the frame of the changes box
\colorlet{colorchangebg}{colorchangeframe!2} % color of the background of the changes box

\colorlet{colorconcludingresponsefg}{black} % color of the title and text in the concluding response box
\colorlet{colorconcludingresponsebg}{black!1} % color of the background of the concluding response box
\colorlet{colorconcludingresponseframe}{black!20} % color of the frame of the concluding response box

Borders

If you want to change the thickness of the borders, you can set
\borderthickness and \accentborderthickness to custom values.
The following values are the defaults.

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\setlength{\borderthickness}{0.75pt}  % border around all boxes
\setlength{\accentborderthickness}{5pt}  % accent border on the left side of the revcomment and changes boxes

Fonts

Changing the document fonts can be done in any normal LaTeX way, e.g., through
loading specific font packages or using \setmainfont from the
fontspec package when using LuaLaTeX.

For the title page, the template uses (custom) KOMA fonts, which can be
changed/updated using \setkomafont or \addtokomafont.
The following are the default values for the komafonts used on the title page.

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\setkomafont{titlehead}{\normalsize\color{black!70}\sffamily}
\setkomafont{title}{\usekomafont{disposition}\Large}
\newkomafont{journalextra}{\normalsize\itshape}
\newkomafont{journal}{\large}
\setkomafont{author}{\large}
\newkomafont{affiliation}{\small}

Options

The class has the following options, which can be set when setting the
\documentclass, i.e., like \documentclass[option=value]{reviewresponse}.
All unknown options will be passed on to the underlying scrartcl class.

• revnumtocomment: (bool)
  If set to true, the reviewer number will be put in front
  of the comment number, i.e., it will say "Comment 2.3" for the third comment
  of the second reviewer.

Contribute

Thank you for considering contributing to this project.
You should be able to find all the information you need at
CONTRIBUTING.md.