Young researchers often wonder about standards regarding the peer-reviewing process. My quick thoughts on this are below.
So, what's the standard? Obligation? Altruism? Karma?
No. Ultimately, the standard for peer-reviewing, is your own long-term happiness.
Your time and effort in helping researchers improve their manuscripts helps you in several ways.
Top three ways peer-reviewing improves your long-term happiness.
1. Representations. Reviewing helps you build a richer mental representation of your field. That richer representation then helps you look at your own research critically.
2. Productivity. Richer representations are significantly important for the narrative process, which is what researchers use to "sell" their research. Reviewing helps you create better stories for your research.
3. Feedback. Giving and receiving effective feedback makes everything better. Effective feedback means being clear and constructive while being totally honest. Writing effective feedback feeds into 1. and 2.
Some other things to consider.
4. Time. Time is a value. I solve that by setting a timer and then submitting my review when that time is up. This constraint has significantly impacted my reviews by narrowing my focus. Will I focus on methodological, statistical, and theoretical issues? My review is clearly open about this limited focus.
5. Garbage. If editors send you garbage you need to discuss that with them directly. Editors must desk-reject junk.
6. Focus. Editors can ask reviewers to focus on sections. I've been asked by Editors, for example, to focus my review on the Results section.
7. Length. One thing I’ve noticed is that by keeping these standards, my reviews have become standardized in length, i.e., about 750 words with a standard deviation of about 25 words.
I'd love to know what you think. Feel free to contact me directly at john.dennis@unipg.it or schedule a call at https://calendly.com/drjohndennis.