Characteristics of a High-quality Review

At this year’s CSCMP Conference in Philadelphia I joined a presentation about high-quality reviews held by the co‐editors in chief of the Journal of Supply Chain Management. Therefore, I’d like to remember their July 2010 editorial, Crafting High-quality Reviews: Guidelines, Examples and Feedback. While a reviewer should identify a manuscript’s deficiencies (“gatekeeper”), a reviewer should also provide suggestions for how these deficiencies can be addressed (“gardener”). The authors argue that a high-quality review should consist of five characteristics: The reviewer should (1) provide a brief summary of the paper at the beginning of the review, (2) convey a constructive attitude, (3) provide a list of specific comments regarding weaknesses and concerns about the manuscript, (4) ensure that an article that reports data takes either an inductive or deductive approach, and (5) assess the level of theoretical development in the paper. In addition, the editors of the Journal of Business Logistics have just provided a prescription for reviewing out of one’s own comfort zone.