For Reviewers

Why the panel matters

A journal is only as good as the reading it gives a manuscript. International Research Insights is building a reviewer panel across law, health and nursing sciences, language and literature, history, education, public policy, and science and environment studies, and applications are open.

Who can review

You are eligible if you hold a doctorate in a relevant field, or a master’s degree with published research and at least five years of professional or teaching experience. Practitioners with substantial standing in their field, including judges, advocates, senior clinicians, nurse educators, archivists and policy officials, are welcome, since some of the best assessment of applied research comes from people who apply it.

Doctoral candidates may join as co reviewers alongside a supervising reviewer, which is how most people learn to review well.

What the journal asks

• Return the report within three weeks of accepting the manuscript.
• Score the manuscript against the seven published criteria in the peer review policy and explain each score in writing.
• Write comments to the author that are specific, actionable and free of personal remarks.
• Recommend one of: accept, accept with minor revision, revise and resubmit, or reject.
• Declare any conflict of interest and decline where one exists.
• Keep the manuscript confidential and do not upload it to any external system that retains submitted text.

Accepting two to four manuscripts a year is a normal commitment. Reviewers who cannot take a manuscript are asked simply to say so, promptly, and to suggest an alternative referee where they can.

What reviewers receive

• A signed certificate of service for each completed review.
• Listing, with consent, in the annual acknowledgement of reviewers published in the December issue.
• The decision letter and the other reviewer’s report on each manuscript reviewed, once the decision is made, which is the most useful form of calibration a reviewer can get.

Reviewing is unpaid, as it is at every scholarly journal, and reviewers hold no obligation to the journal beyond the manuscripts they accept.

How to apply

Write to the editorial office with the subject line REVIEWER PANEL | Section | Your surname and include:

1. your name, qualification, designation and institution;
2. the research section or sections you can review for;
3. four to six keywords describing your expertise;
4. a short curriculum vitae or a link to your institutional profile;
5. your ORCID identifier, if you hold one;
6. a statement of how many manuscripts a year you can take.

Applications are considered by the Managing Editor and answered within three weeks. Successful applicants are added to the panel and receive the review form, the scoring rubric and a short note on writing reports that authors can act on.

Reviewers already invited

Members of the editorial board review as part of their role. Their names, qualifications and institutions are published on the editorial board page. Reviewer names are never attached to specific manuscripts, before or after publication.