Effective reviewing for conceptual journal submissions

Peer reviewed academic journals, like AMS Review, live and die by their ability to obtain high quality reviews of submitted manuscripts. However, academics are increasingly pressed for time, needing to publish their research, teach their classes, and provide service to their Department, Faculty/College and University to support their careers in terms of retention, tenure, and promotion. Amidst these responsibilities, as a service to the Academy, academics also are expected to provide reviews of manuscripts in order to move the intellectual trajectory of the domain forward. High quality reviewing, though, takes cognitive energy and is time consuming, which then interferes with other academic responsibilities. For these reasons, editors of peer-reviewed academic journals are finding it more and more difficult to obtain a sufficient number of high-quality reviews to make good decisions about submissions in a timely manner. The purpose of this article is to help all reviewers, but especially those reviewing conceptual articles, provide a high-quality review. Specifically, this article first defines what constitutes a “high quality review,” and suggests how reviewing can aid an academic’s own research, writing and career. It then defines the behaviors needed for effective reviewing for all manuscripts, termed the 5 R’s: roles, responsibilities, responses, reactions, and respect. It then provides a reviewing template for conceptual articles, given the special difficulties of peer reviewing such articles, and closes with a few additional pieces of advice to help with being efficient in reviewing, while being effective.