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What is that, a rebuttal?
Written on 08.07.2019 13:59 by Robert Künnemann
Hi!
I've received this question (s.t.) via mail today, and I thought it makes sense to make the answer visible to all.
Some conferences give paper authors the chance to react to criticism and correct factual errors. In our mock conference, you have "authored" two papers (you should see yourself listed as one of the authors, one in each of the two categories "theory" and "practice"). You can chose any of those (but carefully, the other one is the one that you have to present).
A rebuttal is, first and foremost, a chance to correct a misunderstanding or to clarify questions raised in reviews. Typical case: a proof is making a step that is not sufficiently elaborated on. The reviewer remarks that she cannot follow this step, and asks why this should be the case. The author, in her rebuttal, gives a justification and promises to add it. Even more typical case: the reviewer complains about missing explanation for notation used in Section 10, and is then pointed to Section 2, where it was indeed explained.
It is a fine line to walk in actual rebuttals, as they are supposed to only correct errors, but may not announce new results or debate a subjective interpretation. In the context of this seminar, however, this is not important: the purpose is to force you to read the reviews and the criticism they contain, so you start to scrutinize parts of the paper that you took for granted, and to argue for the paper from the perspective of the authors.
I hope that helps.
With kind regards, Robert