How to review a paper – Learning from MISQ reviewer workshop2025

Role of the Reviewer —— Advisor, not Decision Maker. Never recommend accept/R&R/reject in your review content.

be informative to editors in arriving at their decisions as well as constructive to authors regardless of the editorial decision (reject, revise, accept).

• Why Review？
  1. review three papers for every paper that submit or resubmit to a journal.
  2. reviewing helps develop both one’s reviewing and editorial skills as well as one’s authorial and scholarship skills.

• Accepting the Reviewer Invitation

  When a reviewer is invited to review a manuscript, it is important that they respond to the review invitation immediately, ideally on the same day. Never reject Top journal’s review invitation.

• How to write a review

  

  • What should be included in a review?
    1. Statement of your expertise and the aspects of the work that you assessed or did not. Especially when you are not familiar with the study.
    2. Your succinct three to five sentence summary of the work.
    3. Assessment of the contributions, current and potential, and the rationale for the assessment.
    4. Assessment of the key strengths of the work.
    5. The major issues, differentiating between issues that are fatal, showstoppers but not necessarily fatal, minor, and your preferences; where possible, provide suggestions on how the issues may be addressed; group and consolidate your comments into coherent themes (e.g., concerns with theoretical development, concerns with measurement) rather than merely providing a list of issues or a page-by-page critique.
    6. Holistic assessment of the work given the pros and cons.
    7. You should not include your advice to the editors on the decision (accept, revise, reject) in your written comments to the authors.
• Referee structure:
  1. put comments into categories: major comments, minor comments, writing, literature review, etc.
  2. Always finish the report within one week of receiving the paper.
  3. Give suggestions that make the paper good.
  4. Be polite and professional in your referee report.
  5. Always put references to provide evidence
  6. Be clear in the referee report.
• How to learn from the review process?
  1. Before sending out the review, send the draft to the AE to ask for feedback.
  2. Look at the review summary to compare and learn from it.
  3. Pay attention to your top journal reviews because when EIC choose the next AE or SE, they will go through your review history and sends out surveys to collect opinions from SEs and AEs.

• Why top journals accept your paper

  

Reference:

• Agarwal, Echambadi, Franco, and Sarkar “Reap Rewards: Maximizing Benefits from Reviewer Comments,” Academy of Management Journal, 49:2, 191-196, 2006.
• Rai, Arun. 2016. “Editor’s Comments: Writing a Virtuous Review,” MIS Quarterly, (40: 3) pp.iii-x.
• Daft, “Why I Recommended That Your Manuscript Be Rejected and What You Can Do about It,” in Cummings and Frost (Eds.) Publishing in the Organizational Sciences, Irwin, 1985, pp. 193-209.
• Detmar Straub editorials:
  1. Straub, Detmar W.. 2009. “Editor’s Comments: Diamond Mining or Coal Mining? Which Reviewing Industry Are We In?,” MIS Quarterly, (33: 2) pp.iii-vii.
  2. Straub, Detmar W.. 2009. “Editor’s Comments: Why Top Journals Accept Your Paper,” MIS Quarterly, (33: 3) pp.iii-x.
  3. Straub, D. W., & Ang, S. (2008). Editor’s comments: readability and the relevance versus rigor debate. Mis Quarterly, iii-xiii.
• Academy of Management Journal essays:
  1. Seibert “Anatomy of an R&R (or Reviewers are an Author’s Best Friends)” Academy of Management Journal, 49:2, 203-207, 2006
  2. Rynes “Observations on ‘Anatomy of an R&R’ and Other Reflections,” Academy of Management Journal, 49:2, 208-214, 2006

Materials:

how to write a referee report.pdf

MISQ Workshops for Author and Reviewer Development.pdf–application deadline by December 1st