1000-word critical review
Write a “referee report” on the paper:
- What is right with the paper? Is it likely to (a) stand the test of time; or (b) people will learn something from it; or
- What is wrong with the paper? Is it (c) a good try, not quite there; (d) a bad idea or badly executed; or (f) terribly flawed.
- How to fix the paper, if there is one or a few things wrong with it that are fixable, &
- Whether the paper ought to be regarded as a successful contribution to knowledge (& hence published in this journal)
Approaching your paper with this list of questions may be helpful—but your paper cannot try to answer all of them:
- What is the research question and the main contribution of the paper?
- Why is the research question important? If they got it right, why would you care?
- Broadly, how do the authors try to address the question? Why were previous attempts, if any, inadequate?
- Is there a theoretical model underlying the research? Why is theory not sufficient to answer the question? What role does theory play in the research?
- What is the dataset used for the study? What is the main limitation of the dataset? Does this limitation pose constraints on the empirical strategy?
- What are the key objects/parameters of interest? Intuitively, how are they identified from the data? Is the empirical strategy convincing and the modelling choices reasonable?
- What are the main results? Do you find them believable, and why? How does the author evaluate the results?
- Which is the most unpalatable assumption in paper? Why did the authors make that assumption? How does the assumption affect your evaluation of the answer to the research question?
- Are there any policy consequences of the research? What else would you like to know before implementing these policies?
- What are the open questions that result from this paper?