Reviewer guide
Peer review at CCCURJ Flagship is developmental as well as selective: the goal is to show the authors, usually first-time researchers, how to make their work publishable, while keeping the bar for acceptance high. Read this before your first review; the report form follows the same sections.
Before you start
- Conflicts. Decline if you are a co-author, collaborator, mentor, classmate in the same project or close colleague of an author. Same college is not automatically a conflict, but tell the editor.
- Confidentiality. Do not share the manuscript, and never upload or paste any part of it into an external generative AI system. You may use AI to polish your own wording.
- Time. Accept or decline the invitation promptly, and tell the editor if you cannot finish.
Writing the report
Read the whole paper, including figures and references, before you write. Then fill in each section:
- Summary
- In your own words, what the work does and what it claims. If you cannot summarize it, say what was unclear.
- Strengths
- What the work does well. Authors learn as much from what works as from what does not.
- Major issues
- Problems that must be fixed before the work could be accepted: a claim the evidence does not support, a flawed method, missing data. Number them so the authors can answer each one.
- Methods and evidence
- Are the methods appropriate and described well enough to repeat? Do the results actually support the conclusions?
- Citations and context
- Is earlier work cited accurately and fairly? Is anything important missing? Never ask authors to cite your own work.
- Ethics and disclosures
- Are funding, conflicts, collaborations and AI use disclosed? Did work with people have ethics approval? Are data and code available where they should be?
- Minor points
- Typos, unclear figures, wording. Optional, and keep it short.
Your recommendation
- Accept
- Ready to publish as it is, apart from trivial fixes.
- Minor revision
- Sound work; a few clear changes needed, no new analysis.
- Major revision
- Promising, but needs substantial changes: new analysis, a reframed claim, missing data.
- Reject
- A fundamental problem that revision cannot fix, or outside the journal's scope. Say why.
The managing editor decides, using every report. Revision is a normal outcome, not a failure.
Be specific and kind
Write about the work, not the person. Point to the page, section or figure, say why it matters, and suggest a fix.
| Not helpful | Helpful |
|---|---|
| The methods are bad. | The survey had 40 responses from one class (Section 3), so the results may not apply to other colleges. Please say this in the limitations, or add responses from another class. |
| Needs more references. | The claim that most students use public transit (p. 2) needs a source; the California Community Colleges student survey would be one option. |
| Great paper! | Figure 2 makes the main result easy to see: completion rises with distance from campus up to 10 miles. Labeling the axes in miles would make it clearer still. |
After you submit
- The managing editor rates every report helpful, adequate or weak, often with a note. Only you and the editors see this; it is how reviewers improve.
- Reports rated weak do not count on the leaderboard.
- If the work is accepted, your report and your name are published with it under CC BY 4.0.