line 57: the FONLL model predicts open-charm cross sections as mentioned here. However, in Tab. 2 J/Psi cross sections from models are quoted including FONLL. This needs to be clarified. How is the translation from open charm to J/Psi done for FONLL?

Indeed this may need a sentence of explanation. One could write the first paragraph as "In a first step it will be checked how well the interpolation functions introduced above are able to reproduce the energy dependence of theoretical calculations. Theoretical predictions for prompt J/psi production in the rapidity range 2.5 < y < 4.0 and integrated over transverse momentum have been obtained for the Leading Order Colour Evaporation Model (LO-CEM) [14]. In addition, the FONLL [15] model for open charm production has also been used. This model gives predictions for the open charm cross section, so we assume here that the fraction of ccbar pairs ending up in a bound state is constant vs sqrt(s). Table 2 lists the available calculations."

good point...

Table 2: 'Relative J/Psi cross sections' are quoted without saying explicitly relative to 'what' these cross sections are. I suggest to define this properly.

This is also brought up by other reviewers. One possibility (what do you think?) is to rescale the 5.02 TeV to 1 everywhere and use such values in the table. then in the caption we might add a sentence saying something like "The quoted numbers represent relative cross sections, having arbitrarily fixed to 1 the values at sqrt(s)=5.02 TeV".

We will work on this...

lines 87-88: 'uncertainty was determined by fluctuating the measured cross-sections within their errors' sounds a bit cryptic. I assume what was done is to fluctuate the individual data points, repeat the interpolation procedure, and iterate this a couple of times (how many). The distribution of the resulting cross sections at 5.02 TeV is then evaluated concerning the uncertainty, right? How exactly was this uncertainty determined?

Indeed this is equivalent to what we did (strictly speaking we performed a fit with zero degrees of freedom but this should lead to the same results, we are going to check....). Clearly the number of iterations for such an approach is large. Should we add more info in the sentence ? Michael, which is your feeling ?

Maybe the text is a bit terse, but apparently the message got across. We should nevertheless be a bit more explicit.

at last a formal issue: it is clear that ALICE and LHCb use different convention how to write certain terms. For example, ALICE does not use fonts in italics when quoting a collisions system, not even for 'pp' (also not for 'p-Pb' and for 'Pb-Pb'). Next is the use of a hyphen. In ALICE lingo, 'pp' is without a hyphen but 'p-Pb' and 'Pb-Pb' are with hyphens. Next is the term 'cross section' which ALICE writes without hyphen. There are a few more examples such as the 'b' in 'b quark' being written in italics or not. I fully understand that this is where 'worlds collide' and I suggest that the authors of the note discuss this and decide on common conventions for this note.

This has to be fixed in some way. It seems to me that Michael has adopted everywhere the LHCb style, correct ? We are not against keeping this style (after all you accepted to write 5.02 TeV )

With Zhenwei's help I probably arrived at something close the LHCb style. Personally I think there that is no real need to adopt one style or the other. We shouls just come up with something that's internally consistent.

-- EnricoScomparin - 14 Nov 2013