restat-rebuttal
Use when a The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) decision letter (R&R or reject-and-resubmit) has arrived and the manuscript needs a response-to-referees letter and a revision plan. Drafts the response strategy; it does not run new analysis (route that to the analysis skills).
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill restat-rebuttal --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Rebuttal & Response Letter (restat-rebuttal) ## When to trigger - A REStat R&R (or a reject with encouragement) arrived and you must respond - You need to triage referee comments into changes, pushbacks, and concessions - The response letter needs structure before you write a word of revision - Referees disagree with each other and you must navigate conflicting demands ## The REStat rebuttal mindset A REStat revision is judged on whether you **took the identification and measurement concerns seriously and resolved them with evidence**, not rhetoric. The editor is an applied economist arbitrating between referees; your letter must make their job easy: **every comment quoted, addressed, and pointed to the exact change** (page/table/figure). Treat the toughest **identification / measurement** objection as the centerpiece — that is what gets papers rejected at REStat, and resolving it convincingly is what gets them accepted. Concede gracefully where the referee is right; push back **with evidence, never tone** where they are wrong. ## Response-letter structure 1. **Opening:** thank the editor and referees; summarize the 2–4 substantive changes in a short paragraph the editor can skim
- When to trigger
- The REStat rebuttal mindset
- Response-letter structure
- Triage table
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Worked vignette: resolving the centerpiece objection (illustrative)
- Output format
What does the restat-rebuttal skill do?
Use when a The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) decision letter (R&R or reject-and-resubmit) has arrived and the manuscript needs a response-to-referees letter and a revision plan. Drafts the response strategy; it does not run new analysis (route that to the analysis skills).
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill restat-rebuttal --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 909 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.