Developing Effective Peer Reviewing Skills

31 Mar 2025

Professor Niki Panteli (Lancaster University, UK)
BAM Peer Review College Fellow and Event Co-Chair

Professor Stefanie Reisnner (Durham University, UK)
BAM Peer Review College Fellow, Inaugural BAM Chair of Research Grants, and Event Co-Chair

As academics we are eager to publish our research in respectable academic journals and conferences. We expect reviewers to provide if not always positive, at least constructive, feedback so that our papers become the best they can be in order to reach the publication stage. We also expect reviewers to act as stable pillars and ‘stay with’ the paper during the various rounds of review. It is therefore clear that reviewing is an incredibly valuable task in academia and that reviewers perform a much-needed role.

With an increasing recognition of the need for quality reviewing, the BAM Peer Review College, which provides support for all reviewing activity within BAM, has organised for a fourth year in a row a workshop on effective peer review. The event normally coincides with the reviewing of the submitted papers to the annual BAM conference and this year it took place on 3^rd March 2025. For the first time the event was extended to include, in addition to journal and conference reviewing, research grant reviewing as well.

The purpose of the event was three-fold: 1) to appreciate the importance of academic reviewing, 2) to identify best and worst practices for academic reviewing, and 3) encourage opportunities for attendees to engage in group discussions on reviewing different types of papers (i.e. conceptual, qualitative and quantitative) as well as engagement with the research grant reviewing process. Each group was facilitated by at least two senior academics with diverse management backgrounds including HRM, organisational behaviour, information systems, strategy, international business and marketing.

Reviewing Research Articles

Reviewing seeks to provide a critical judgement on the value of a submitted paper and offer recommendations for improvements and therefore reviewers play a key role in the academic publishing process. By reviewing, academic researchers and scholars actively contribute to the advancement of their discipline, support their fellow scholars and the wider academic community. When reviewing is done well, it may be rewarded (e.g. best reviewer award) and becomes the first step in gaining editorial positions in academic journals.

During the event we covered the basics of reviewing and distinguished between good and bad practices including what needs to be avoided with some of the key practices presented. Table 1 below distinguishes between good and bad practices especially useful for those new to the reviewing process:

Table 1: Good and Bad Practices in Peer Reviewing Articles

Good Practices	Bad Practices
Review with good will, with care and attention	Showing off - Reviewer 2 (rude and disrespectful)
Be diligent; check the claims being made	Promoting your own publications – it is unethical
Be familiar with the expectations, standards and language of the journal and conference	Providing brief comments with no explanations or areas of improvements
Be constructive, positive, encouraging	Be negative or sarcastic to the authors and their work
Begin with the strengths of the paper; and identify areas for improvements	Don’t drop out of the review process after one round of reviews – always see the paper through till the final decision is made.

Reviewing Research Grant Applications

Despite some overarching principles of peer review outlined above, there are some fundamental differences between reviewing papers submitted to conferences/journals and research grant applications, which are summarised in Table 2.

Table 2: Key Differences between Peer Reviewing Articles and Grant Applications

Research article reviewing	Research grant reviewing	Implications for reviewing research grant applications
The research has already been conducted and results are available.	The research is being planned and therefore is largely aspirational.	The focus of the review is on the potential of the research and the applicant team as well as any non-academic stakeholders.
The journal review process is a journey of development with multiple review and decision points.	There is a single review and decision point.	Reviewers should provide a fair assessment of the benefits and limitations of the project rather than seek to shape its further development.
The focus is solely on the quality of the research using the journal’s or conference’s specific criteria	Both the quality of the application and the funder’s mission and priorities play a part in the assessment.	Reviewers should familiarise themselves and assess both the quality of the research and its fit with the scheme criteria.
Despite space limitations in conferences and journals, the reviewers focus on the quality of the research rather than publishing capacity (that is the job of the editors).	All funders only have a finite amount of money available, so capacity has a role in grant applications.	Reviewers should write their assessment in a way that will enable the grant assessment panel to rank the applications and award funding to the strongest ones.

A good research grant reviewer, therefore, provides an overall critical judgement regarding the value of a grant application in terms of:

The fit of the work with the funders’ mission and priorities
The topicality, timeliness and significance of the research question
The appropriateness and strength of the methods
The applicants’ knowledge of the field
The applicants’ track record or experience to deliver the work
And any other criteria that the funder may have

The review and funding process of research grants puts additional responsibilities onto reviewers. You should only agree to review a research grant if you have relevant expertise and ensure that you know the funder’s mission, priorities, expectations, guidelines and timelines for reviewing. Give yourself plenty of time to do justice to the application and the work that has gone into it, being mindful that applicants only have one shot!

Grant assessment panels typically consist of a wide range of stakeholders, including academics from different disciplines and non-academic stakeholders from industry, policy and/or the third sector. To communicate effectively with such a diverse audience, your assessment should be clear, direct and free of jargon. Any numerical scores should match the qualitative comments you provide, using evidence from the application to underpin your critique where relevant.

Most importantly, be kind, constructive and professional – assess the work of your peers in the same way as you would like your work to be assessed!

We are grateful to Dermot Breslin (Rennes School of Business, France), Rudolf Sinkovics (Durham University, UK), Marta Fernandez De Arroyabe Arranz (University of Essex, UK), Natalia Yakovleva (KEDGE Business School, France), Sally Dibb (Coventry University, UK), Stewart Johnstone (Strathclyde University, UK) and Sara Melo (Queen’s University Belfast, UK) for acting as workshop facilitators and sharing their reviewing and editorial experience with attendees.

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