Instead of Dry January, I’m going review free for January after having nearly 80 review requests last year. My New Year’s resolution was to have a healthier relationships with reviewing, which had become a part-time, unpaid job (though I recognize that I’m still coming from a place of privilege). Nevertheless, while I didn’t accept all of those requests, I did more than 30 last year.

My fear is becoming Reviewer 2: the more reviews I do, the more I potentially resent the review process (former Duck contributor Laura Sjoberg has a good post on not becoming reviewer 2). I don’t want to take out my frustration with being asked to do so many reviews on authors.

On the other hand, if I continue to get this volume of requests, which is in keeping with the previous year, then I need a way to manage my time better and be fair to the authors I do review. In my last post, I wrote about how the review process might be broken, in this one I want to talk about strategies to review manuscripts both efficiently and fairly.

I’ve already used many of these strategies in the past but may need to apply them more systematically going forward. Some of these strategies might be helpful to you, either now or in the future, particularly if you experience, like I have, a short up-tick in review requests over time.

You Can Say No

Look, you under no obligation to say yes to reviews. That is especially true for ones outside your area of expertise or not in your core area of research.

That said, the whole academic enterprise rests on this form of diffuse reciprocity where you submit one piece, and you should review at least one in return. But, since most pieces require 2 or more reviews, you should really be thinking about one article out for review, do 2 or 3 reviews in return.

Still, you might find that a decision rule of only review articles in your core areas of research doesn’t narrow it down enough.

Here are some other considerations.

Say No to Predatory Journals

I don’t review for MDPI journals which is a family of journals that have a bad reputation for pay-to-play, fast review times, and lax peer review. After getting a flood of MDPI journal review requests in previous years, I largely don’t now, but many of the titles are in areas potentially relevant to my research areas.

Say No to Journals You Haven’t Heard Of

I get review requests from a wide group of energy and environmental journals, many of which I haven’t heard of, don’t intend to submit to, and have never read. I might still review for them if it’s right in the lane of the stuff I’m working on, but you might limit your reviews to top journals in your field or journals that you can imagine yourself submitting to.

That can be kind of parochial and I usually base my decisions more on how close the paper is to something I’m interested in. I generally say yes to any journal that asks me to review either while I’ve got something under review with them or if I’m about to submit something.

Say No if a Journal Asks for Too Many Reviews in a Year

I have had experiences with some journals like Environmental Research Letters where I was getting multiple review requests from them a month, sometimes within a week to ten days of each other. You might have a rule saying I will only review for a journal once a month.

Say Yes to R&Rs

I mostly say yes to R&Rs though there are exceptions. If you’ve already read a piece once, it’s tough for a journal if you back out at the R&R stage, though I think it’s fair to say no, if it’s a second R&R.

Pace Yourself

Some people only agree to a certain number of reviews a month like having 2 or 4 or 5 at any one time. Find a decision rule that works for you, but you can always tell journals, look I already have X number of articles in my queue right now, I can’t handle any more.

You can also strategically pause doing reviews – like my Dry January for reviews.

Now, once you’ve said yes, there are some strategies I already deploy.

Read and Write the Review in One Sitting

This is my number one piece of advice if you start getting a lot of reviews. If you start reading a piece, finish it one sitting and do the review right away. If you read part of it and then have to return to it, chances are you won’t remember the work well, and you’ll have to re-read all or part of the piece, which just drags things out.

If you wait to write the review, it won’t be fresh, and you’ll likely have to re-read part of the piece to just remember what you wanted to say.

Just write out some notes as you go and organize them into a narrative as soon as you’re done reading. I like to go back through my notes and provide bolded or all caps headers to frame each point.

Spend 1.5 to 2 Hours per Article Max

I’ll admit this might be controversial. I did a Bluesky thread on this topic and some folks thought this idea was crazy. Some folks I talk to say they spend a better part of a day on each review.

I certainly can’t do this for books for presses, which take full days, but if you end up doing 30+ reviews a year like I do, plus tenure reviews, and other administrative work, dedicating a day per manuscript would be a month plus of unpaid labor.

This might not work for you early on in your career and may not be necessary if you only get a few review requests, but if you start to get a lot of reviews, you should be able to try to be more time efficient with your reviews with experience.

Don’t Get Hung up on Areas Outside Your Expertise

If the piece uses, say, fancy methods you don’t know, say that and tell the editors to consult a methodologist. I don’t have time to read someone’s paper and agonize over all parts of it. If it is something I need for my own work, maybe I’ll puzzle over it a bit longer, but I usually just comment on the parts of the article that are most relevant to my expertise.

Given how poor quality many reviews are, I think a satisficing effort where you economize your time and don’t sweat areas that you don’t know can help you get through reviews without spending a whole workday on one article.

If you are honest with the editors about the limits of your expertise and approach the exercise trying to be constructive to the author, you can avoid being Reviewer 2 and be both time efficient in your effort and fair to the author.

If you say no, there will be other reviews. You want to be as intentional with your time and journals, like universities, don’t love you or pay the bills. So, while being the selfish jerk who submits everywhere and doesn’t ever review is beyond the pale, you also don’t want to be the sucker that does all the free labor for the field.