Review
Reviewer guidelines
Assess the paper against the published criteria.
Assessing the paper
- Is the reasoning valid on its own terms?
- For an empirical paper, does the design identify what the paper claims it identifies?
- Do the methods support the claims made from them?
- Are the sources real, correctly cited and correctly characterised?
- Is the contribution stated accurately?
What is not a reason to reject
That a theory is unrealistic, that the mathematics is simple or difficult, that the paper is inelegant, or that the topic does not interest you. Disagreement with a conclusion is not a ground for rejection where the evidence supports it. Disagreement is a ground where the evidence does not: an identifying assumption that will not hold, or an inference the data cannot carry, is a defect in the paper and should be stated as one.
For a theory paper, strong assumptions are not a fault in themselves. For an empirical paper, an implausible identifying assumption is.
Reports
Reports are written to be read by the author. Where a report is published it appears in full alongside the paper, with the reviewer's consent.