Joscha Knolle Comments on EXO-19-012 paper draft v18 Type B ====== Title: "new background prediction method" -> can we be more specific about what is new in this method? Abstract.4: "using two complementary data-driven methods" -> to match the title, you should mention here that one of these two is a new method Abstract.10: "extending previous searches" refers to all three signal scenarios here, right? Then you should put a comma before this phrase. L17: "in the previous CMS search [16]" -> add the difference between the old and the new result, i.e. that the one is 2016 only and now we use full Run 2 data. L83: "For PF-jets that satisfy |eta|<2.5, ..." -> do you use any jets with |eta|>2.5? If not, you don't need this specification here for the jet ID because this is the only type of jets discussed in the paper. L88: "previous CMS searches [16, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 29, 43]" -> it should be enough to mention just the one or two most recent results here, or the one where this specific analysis part is discussed in greater detail. L207: "the same as those used by previous ... searches ... performed by the CMS collaboration" -> shouldn't there be one reference here? L263: "see pages 248 and 233 of Ref. [60]" -> replace by "[60]", don't need the page references Type A ====== Abstract.8: "of narrow resonances, and broad spin-1" -> no "and" between the first and second item of a three-item list Abstract.11: "and exclude, at 95% confidence level" -> no comma here L3: "String resonances [1,2]" has too much space before the opening bracket. I see in your texcode "resonances ~\cite" -> should be "resonances~\cite" without an additional space. This happens at a lot of places in the paper. L117, L122, L131 etc.: Use one consistent style for "PYTHIA" Fig. 1, y-axis label: Express "Thousands of Events" in a more conventional style Fig. 2, legend: use "PYTHIA" as in the text Fig. 2, legend: increase the spacing between the three lines "CR_high", "CR_middle", "SR" L193: "The ratio method proves a background estimate" -> provides L195: "the fit method.This is because" -> missing space L197: "CR_middle" -> wrong style Eq. (2), Eq. (3), L154: I think the equations should be part of the sentence structure around, so the two equations should end with a comma (or similar), and L154 should start lower case. This also applies to all other formulas in the paper. L158: "Fig. 4" -> "Figure 4" L161 (and later): Is the plural "eta's" here really important? Looks strange. Eq. 5: "R_aux^Data" -> shouldn't the "Data" part start directly after the R, and not after the "aux"? L172: "separatelly" -> "separately" L184: "model.For the" -> missing space Fig. 4, legend: Use consistently "POWHEG" in all captions (it's lower case in the lower left panel) L238: "and decreases as the resonance mass increases" -> this sentence is grammatically not complete L241: "Figures 6 -7" -> too many spaces L247, L258: write either "sigma x B x A" or "sigma B A" consistently in all spots L253: "in 100-GeV steps" -> either "in 100 GeV steps" or "in steps of 100 GeV" L271: don't break "95% CL" Fig. 7, legend: uniform font size for different model names L308: "fit method.No evidence" -> missing space Ref. [52], [53], [54]: Use the correct title which is different for each of the luminosity PASes