My paper was accepted into IEEE COMPSAC (a comp sci conference). As far as I can tell, it was a straight accept and not "conditional acceptance". The reviewers had some comments/questions on my paper. However, I can't find a means to reply to comments anywhere on the website and the notification email didn't mention the need/mechanism to respond to comments either. Do I still need to respond to reviewer comments?
1 Answer
There are some computer science conference that have a so-called rebuttal period, in which the authors get a chance to reply to the comments by the reviewers. However, this happens before the decision to accept or reject the paper.
Once your paper reached the "accepted" stage, there is no need to reply to the reviewers. The paper has been approved with the expectation that when you prepare the final version of the paper which will be published, you take the reviewer comments into account in a careful way.
This does not mean that each and every change request by the reviewers need to be implemented. Those requests that you believe make the paper worse can be ignored by you, without a need to mention this anywhere. If the paper changed a lot (for the better) because of detailed feedback, it is customary to thank the reviewers for their suggestions in the acknowledgements. There is no obligation to do so, however.