Doing Economics

6.3 Reviewing
The one professional service task you are likely to be called upon to
perform early in your career is reviewing manuscripts for journals.
Reviewing (or refereeing; the two are interchangeable) is a thankless task.
Ostensibly, beyond listing the journals you have refereed for in your CV,
there is no outward glory in reviewing. In some cases, you may get an
automatic email once a decision has been made on a manuscript you have

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reviewed informing you of the editor’s decision, and thanking you for your
service to the journal, but not all journals do that. Less commonly, a journal
you have reviewed for might give an annual award to its best reviewers.
Generally, however, only a handful of people will ever get to see the effort
you put into your reviews, and among that handful of people, most of them
will not know your name, and some of them may even resent you for it. In
some rare cases, you may receive some symbolic compensation—usually
just about enough to cover your share of a nice dinner out—if you return
your review in time, but that remains uncommon.
5
This last paragraph should have raised a number of questions in your
mind, and so the goal of this section is to provide answers to those
questions.
Why review manuscripts for journals if I am not getting paid for it? For
the peer-review process to work, you have to give at least as much as you
take. Let us consider the most optimistic of scenarios—so optimistic, in
fact, as to border on fiction if you have any ambition: the first journal you
ever send a paper to sends out your manuscript to two reviewers, and they
both recommend that your paper be accepted “as is.” This means that for
your one submission, you have benefited from two reviewers giving your
manuscript a thorough read. In this hypothetical scenario, for the system to
work, you should perform at least two reviews.
Realistically, however, odds are your paper will be rejected after review a
few times, that it will have more than two reviewers at some journals, and
that when it does get accepted, it gets accepted after one or two rounds of
revisions, so that your total debt to the peer-review system for that one
publication is more like eight to ten reviews. That is why you should review
manuscripts for journals even if you are not getting paid for it. As I have
noted in earlier chapters, (almost) everyone is smart in this profession. If
you really wish to stand out, contribute to public goods.
How do I get to review for a journal? In order for you to be asked to
review a manuscript, the editor in charge of that manuscript has to know
who you are and what you are qualified to review. Short of having an
advisor who edits a journal, the best way for an editor to know who you are
and what you are qualified to review is for you to submit to their journal,
but there are also other ways. Very often, a senior scholar whom I solicit a
review from will be unable to do so, but they will suggest their junior

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coauthor or a student of theirs instead. Less commonly, when you are at the
start of your career, an editor will ask you to serve as reviewer because a
paper they are handling cites your work. Though you might be champing at
the bit and be looking forward to refereeing, it is relatively rare that
emailing an editor to tell them you would like to review for their journal
will actually lead to the desired outcome.
I was asked to review a paper; what do I do? First, let the editor know
whether you accept or decline the reviewing assignment as soon as you get
their request. The peer-review process is slow enough in economics that
you should not take days (or worse, weeks) after opening an email inviting
you to review a manuscript before responding. The quicker you act on that
email, the more you help speed things along for the authors.
Second, how do you decide whether you should agree to do a review or
not? My own rule for myself, before I had any editorial duties of my own,
was to never turn down a refereeing request when asked by a legitimate—
that is, non-predatory—journal, because there is a great deal of value in
reading bad papers, as I discussed in chapter 2. But I was in a privileged
position at the time, with our daughter yet to be born, and with my teaching
load never exceeding two classes per semester. As a rule, when it comes to
refereeing, I would suggest doing as much as you can because there is a lot
to learn from reviewing all kinds of papers.
“As much as you can,” however, tends to vary both between and within
individuals, and there are very good reasons to decline a review. If you have
just had a child, are caring for an elderly parent, are seriously ill, or have
any other personal constraint, it is perfectly fine to turn down a reviewing
request. If you already have a pending review assignment for the same
journal, that is also a good reason to decline doing a review. Another good
reason is if you have three or more other reviews pending for various
journals, or if you have a conflict of interest. Ultimately, any good reason to
decline is fine, provided you let the editor know why you are declining so
she does not think you are simply blowing her off.
Here are a few reasons to decline a reviewing assignment which I have
been given as editor and which I would consider less than good. Here is
one: “I am on sabbatical.” This one is especially bad because if you are on
sabbatical, it is presumably so you can delve into research. What better way
is there to remain abreast of what is being done in your field than to serve

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as reviewer? Another: “This is not my research topic.” Be that as it may,
sometimes an editor wants to have the opinion of someone who is not an
expert on a given topic, just to see if a paper will be interesting to more than
the ten or so people in the world who care about a topic. And another: “I am
too busy.” There are very few people in this profession who are not “too
busy,” and yet things still get done.
Why does it matter that you give a good reason to decline when you do
so? Because very often, the editors of the journals you submit to are among
the handful of scholars whose external evaluations of your research and
service records will be solicited when you go up for tenure or for
promotion. Ideally, you want your external reviewers to want and be able to
say good things (or at the very least, not have anything negative to say)
about you in their letters. Though most early-career researchers may not
realize it, getting tenure at your home institution is a by-product of getting
tenure in the profession first and foremost. Even though economics has
tolerated more than its fair share of jerks for far too long, being a good
citizen of the profession can never hurt your career.
Additionally, if you have any hope of becoming an editorial board
member, associate editor, co-editor, editor—all titles that unfortunately have
different meanings at different journals, but which show that the profession
has recognized your contribution and your acumen when it comes to
identifying good research—you should realize that a journal’s reviewers are
the minor-league team from which the major-league team of editors
recruits.