The assessment of articles by reviewers is crucial within the scientific certification process of RAE. Their reports offer valuable guidance for potential publications. We want reviewers to serve as our gatekeepers, focused on identifying manuscript shortcomings and offering constructive suggestions for improvement. As such, RAE encourages reviewers to move away from brief, overly critical evaluations and instead aims for comprehensive assessments that:

- Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript upfront.

- Evaluate the novelty, relevance, and contribution to the existing knowledge base.

- Scrutinize the theoretical framework, ensuring essential references are included and suggesting additional readings if necessary.

- Thoroughly examine the methodology for appropriateness and accuracy, including also code verification for qualitative studies and statistical rigor for quantitative analyses.

- Verify the discussion's claims against the results and assess if they are reasonable.

- Consider the manuscript's theoretical contribution and potential societal impact.

- Evaluate the quality of the writing.

- Lists minor points for improvement, if any.

 

The reviewers should have full knowledge of, and ensure that their conduct is in keeping with, the RAE Code of Ethic and Conduct

 

Making your recommendation

You will make an overall recommendation to the associate editor and editor-in-chief to complete your review and they will take this into account when they make their decision. The most common recommendations are:

Accept: Recommend only if you believe the manuscript is ready for publication and no other change is needed. Although possible, it is very unlikely that a manuscript will be accepted without some sort of revision of the first submission

 

Minor revisions: involves requiring authors to make minor adjustments in the manuscript, which don’t take much time, like word count reduction, formatting changes, labelling improvements, or slight elaborations on research findings

 

Major revisions: involves requiring authors to make significant improvements, which might take weeks or months. This could involve, for instance, addressing flaws in methodology, collecting more data, adding more literature, conducting deeper analysis, or refining the research question for a more original contribution.

 

Reject: involve manuscripts that have fundamental flaws in the methodology or a considerable number of issues that ultimately make it difficult to see any potential in the manuscript. Fatal flaws are difficulties in the manuscript that cannot be corrected and usually involve technical aspects such as internal and construct validity (Schwab, 1985).

 

Reject and resubmit: you may feel that the manuscript should be rejected but it covers a relevant topics and has potential, if the authors are able to address all the issues raised by the review team. Please only suggest a resubmission if the manuscript has potential to make a significant theoretical contribution and/ or to develop solutions to the great challenges faced by organizations and contemporary society.

 

Further readings on reviewing

Schwab, D. P. (1985). Reviewing empirically based manuscripts: Perspectives on process. Publishing in the organizational sciences, 171, 181.

AOM Reviewer Guidelines - https://aom.org/events/annual-meeting/reviewing/reviewer-guidelines