Becoming an Excellent Peer Reviewer: A Writer’s Camp Learning Trail
Parveen Ali, PhD, MScN, BScN, RN, SHEA, FFPH, FAAN
Writer’s Camp Counselor
Abstract
This article emphasizes the essential role of peer reviewers in the academic publishing process. It outlines effective evaluation practices, warns against common pitfalls like unconstructive criticism, and advises on setting clear boundaries within reviews. A good reviewer balances constructive feedback with respect, ultimately helping authors improve their work without overreaching.
What to evaluate, when to step back, and why nobody wants to be Reviewer 2.
Let me start with something that might surprise you. When a manuscript lands in your inbox for peer review, the editor has already done a considerable amount of work. They have read it. They have decided it fits the journal’s scope. They have judged that it has enough merit to be worth expert scrutiny. They have then thought about who that expert should be and chose you.
You are not being asked to decide whether this manuscript should exist, but to help the editor make a decision about its fate and help the author improve. You are being asked to help it become the best version of itself, or to explain clearly why it is not yet ready. That is a different task, and it shapes everything that follows.
What You Are Actually Being Asked to Evaluate
Peer review is not a comprehensive examination of everything that could possibly be said about a manuscript. It is an expert assessment of what you are well placed to judge. That distinction matters more than it might seem.
Depending on your expertise and the nature of the manuscript, your review might focus on the clarity of the research question and purpose, the fit between the methods chosen and the question being asked, the interpretation of findings, whether the findings actually support the conclusions drawn, the appropriateness of the theoretical or conceptual framework, or the relevance of the work to the field and to the journal’s readership. In practice, most reviewers focus on two or three of these areas well, rather than attempting to cover all of them thinly.
Editors know this. When they commission peer review, they often deliberately seek reviewers with different but complementary expertise: one person with strong methodological grounding, another with clinical or practice knowledge, a third with theoretical depth. Your review is one piece of a larger picture. You do not need to be everything.
Reviewing Methods: The Question Behind the Question
Methodological review is one of the areas where reviewers feel most uncertain, and where the most damage can be done if approached wrongly. The temptation is to ask whether you would have done it this way. That is rarely the right question.
The right question is whether the methods chosen are appropriate for the research question being asked, and whether they have been applied with sufficient rigour and transparency to produce findings that can be trusted and if they have been communicated in enough detail to help the reader make sense. A qualitative study should not be criticised for failing to be quantitative. A small exploratory study should not be held to the standard of a large, randomised trial. The question is always: does the methodology fit the purpose, and has it been executed and reported honestly?
When reviewing methods, useful questions to ask yourself include: Is the sample or dataset appropriate for the claims being made? Are limitations acknowledged honestly? Are the analytical procedures described clearly enough that someone else could follow them? Do the findings actually emerge from the data presented, or are the conclusions reaching beyond what the evidence supports?
And crucially: if statistical analysis is outside your expertise, say so. This is not a weakness. It is useful information for the editor, who may already have a statistically focused reviewer on the paper, or who may need to seek one. A sentence in your review that says “I am not in a position to assess the statistical modelling in section three and would recommend specialist review of that section” is genuinely helpful. Silence on a section you cannot evaluate, followed by a confident overall recommendation, is not.
When to Step Back: The Art of Knowing Your Limits
Experienced reviewers are often more willing to name their limits than newer ones, which is one of the many ways in which experience improves peer review. If you are reviewing a mixed methods study and your background is primarily quantitative, it is entirely appropriate to note that your comments on the qualitative components are limited. If a manuscript draws on a theoretical tradition that you know only at the surface level, saying so helps the editor calibrate your feedback appropriately.
Deferring on specific aspects of a manuscript is not the same as providing a weak review. A focused, honest review of the areas you know well is more valuable than a sprawling attempt to cover everything at a level of generality that serves no one. Editors can work with precise, bounded feedback. They struggle with vague concerns spread thinly across an entire manuscript.
Nobody Wants to be Reviewer 2
If you have spent any time in academic publishing, you will have encountered the phenomenon of Reviewer 2. The name has become shorthand for a particular kind of review experience: the one that leaves authors staring at their screen wondering what they did to deserve it. Reviewer 2 may have demanded an entirely different study design. They may have listed 17 major concerns and 43 minor ones. They may have written their review in a tone suggesting the manuscript has personally offended them. They may have requested a substantial new dataset, a different theoretical framework, and a rewrite of the introduction, all for a paper that was otherwise ready to publish.
The phrase is used with humour, and the humour matters because it acknowledges something real: unhelpful peer review is common enough to have acquired its own folklore. But from where I sit as an editor, Reviewer 2 is not just a joke. Overly demanding, unconstructive, or disproportionate reviews delay publication, demoralise authors, and waste everyone’s time. They can drive good researchers away from journals and, in some cases, away from publishing altogether.
The behaviours associated with Reviewer 2 tend to cluster around a few patterns. Scope creep: requesting new studies, new data, or entirely new lines of argument that go beyond what the manuscript set out to do. Preference projection: criticising methodological choices not because they are inappropriate but because they differ from what the reviewer would have done. Tone problems: writing feedback in a way that is dismissive, contemptuous, or unkind, even when the concerns themselves might be legitimate. And disproportionality: treating every issue, large or small, as equally significant, resulting in a review that gives no guidance about what actually matters. These behaviours can lead to issues like requests for unnecessary revisions, conflicting reviewer comments, reviewer frustration, and author frustration.
The antidote to all of these is the same question, asked at the end of every review: does this feedback help the author make this manuscript better? If the answer is yes, send it. If the answer is that it would help you feel better about the state of the field, or demonstrate the breadth of your expertise, or redirect the paper toward your own preferred approach, revise before you send it. Don’t suggest new studies, frameworks, or directions unless essential to the manuscript’s validity.
The Shape of a Good Review
A useful review does a small number of things clearly. It summarises what the manuscript is trying to do, which tells the author and editor that you have read it carefully and understood it on its own terms. It identifies the most significant concerns first, with enough specificity that the author knows what is actually being asked of them. It distinguishes between things that must be addressed for the manuscript to be publishable and things that would strengthen it but are not essential. And it is written in a tone that treats the author as a colleague, not a student who has disappointed you.
Length is not the same as quality. A review that runs to 4 pages of detailed concerns is not necessarily more useful than one that runs to 1½ pages of precise, actionable feedback. Editors read both. They know which one took more time to write. They also know which one is more useful to work with.
The best peer reviews I have received as an editor, on behalf of authors, are the ones that clearly came from someone who read the manuscript generously, engaged with what it was trying to do, and then offered precise, honest, proportionate feedback on how it could be stronger. A good review focuses on whether a manuscript is sound, the argument is coherent, and conclusions are supported. Reviewers who write good reviews are rare enough to be genuinely appreciated. They are also, not coincidentally, the ones I invite back.
Your Role in the Larger Process
One last thing worth naming, because it is not always made explicit. Reviewers provide input. Editors make decisions. Your recommendation matters and is taken seriously, but it is one input among several. An editor may accept a manuscript over the objections of one reviewer, or reject one despite a positive recommendation, because they are weighing multiple factors that you may not have full visibility into.
Understanding this is liberating. You do not need to reach a verdict that resolves all uncertainty. You need to provide your honest, expert perspective clearly enough that the editor can use it. That is the job. Done well, it is a genuine contribution to the quality of the published record and to the experience of the authors whose work passes through your hands.
The goal, ultimately, is to be the reviewer you would want on your own work: rigorous, fair, specific, and kind. That reviewer exists. With practice and attention, you can be that person consistently.
Conclusion
Understanding what to evaluate, when to step back, and how to avoid being Reviewer 2 allows peer reviews to focus on their role, avoid overreach, and provide thoughtful guidance. This helps peer reviewers contribute effectively to editorial decision-making and advancing nursing scholarship.
Author: Parveen Ali
Reviewed and Edited by: Jenny Chicca
Copyright © 2026 Writer’s Camp and Parveen Ali. CC-BY-ND 4.0
Citation: Ali P. Trail Stop 7: Reviewing methods and rigor. The Writer’s Camp Journal, 2026;2(3):5. doi:10.5281/zenodo.20709530