--- name: icdm-author-response description: Use when preparing for the review phase of an ICDM (IEEE International Conference on Data Mining) submission - planning for a venue whose tradition is NO author rebuttal, pre-answering reviewer questions inside the submitted PDF and cited artifact, and, only if the current edition opens a response window, drafting a tight anonymity-safe reply. --- # ICDM Author Response Prepare for the ICDM review phase under its defining reality: ICDM's tradition is **no author rebuttal**. Whether the current edition opens a response window is 待核实 (the ICDM 2025 call mentioned responses becoming part of the submission), so this skill has two modes — the default "there is no rebuttal" plan, and the contingency reply if a window exists. Confirm the current Research Track call before assuming either. ## Default mode: pre-answer everything at submission Because you may never get to reply, the submitted PDF and its cited anonymized artifact must answer the questions a reviewer would otherwise raise. Do this *before* the deadline. - **Baseline fairness:** state the tuning budget you gave baselines; pre-empt "you under-tuned the competitor." - **Variance:** report standard deviations over seeded runs; pre-empt "is this just noise?" - **Leakage:** state the time-respecting or edge-disjoint split; pre-empt "your split leaks." - **Scale:** show the cost curve and hardware; pre-empt "scalable is asserted, not shown." - **Discovery validity:** tie findings to known-truth injections; pre-empt "this is an artifact." A weakness you notice yourself is a weakness to fix in the paper, not to defer to a rebuttal that may not come. ## Contingency mode: if a response window opens If the edition does provide a response, treat it as a scarce, high-value channel: | Reviewer point | Response move | |---|---| | Factual misreading | Correct it with a pointer to the exact section/table already in the PDF | | Missing-baseline ask | Report the result if you already have it; do not promise future work | | Clarity complaint | Acknowledge and state the one-line clarification (fixable in camera-ready) | | Fundamental gap | Concede briefly; do not oversell — honesty reads better than bluster | ```text Response skeleton (only if a window exists; keep it tight): R1: [concern] -> [one-sentence answer + exact pointer to existing evidence] R2: [concern] -> [answer] (report only results you already have) R3: [concern] -> [concede if it is a real gap] Rule: reference evidence already in the submitted PDF/artifact; introduce nothing that would break triple-blind anonymity or that you cannot substantiate. ``` ## Keep any response anonymity-safe - The Research Track is triple-blind; a response, if it exists, must not reveal author identity, institution, or a de-anonymizing link. - Do not smuggle in new non-anonymized material or an external identifying URL. ## What not to do - Do not plan the paper assuming a rebuttal will rescue a known weakness. - Do not, if a window exists, argue combatively or restate the paper; answer the specific point. - Do not promise experiments "in the final version" as a substitute for evidence reviewers can see now. ## Vignette: the weakness that never got a second chance A team knew their leakage guard was easy to misread but assumed they could explain it in a rebuttal. ICDM offered none; two reviewers flagged possible leakage and the paper was rejected on a doubt the authors could have removed with one sentence in the submitted PDF. The lesson: at ICDM, the rebuttal happens *before* submission — in the writing. The next cycle they stated the split explicitly in the experimental setup and the concern never arose. ## Output format ```text [Rebuttal exists?] no (default) / yes (verify on current call) [Pre-answered in PDF] baselines / variance / leakage / scale / validity - list gaps [If window exists] per-reviewer reply drafted: yes / N-A [Anonymity] response reveals no identity: pass / N-A [Pre-submission fixes] ```