Reply to “Ecosystem modeling in the Northeastern United States: a comment on Sivel et al.” by J.S. Link

Sivel et al. (2025) provided a review of peer-reviewed literature focused on food-web modeling and highlighted the many important contributions from research focused on the Northeastern US Shelf. Link (2025) raised several points related to our criteria of model evaluation and exclusive use of peer-reviewed literature, among others. We defend our use of peer-reviewed literature, clear search methodology, and our definition of model evaluation in determining whether a model application was validated. Our team that was led by early-career scientists found areas of agreement with Link (2025) but strongly disagree that the involvement of senior scientists or “experts” from outside the author team is needed in conducting analyses such as those presented in Sivel et al. (2025).