Personnel Psychology Reviewer Guidelines

This page outlines our suggestions for constructive and useful reviews. We appreciate your willingness to become a part of our reviewer community. This page is not meant to be all inclusive, but to highlight some important considerations we expect from all reviewers:

  1. Conflict of interest: Please declare any conflict of interest as soon as you become aware of it. Conflict of interest may stem from your relationship with the authors (e.g., you are a coauthor or have a close professional relationship with the authors) or the topic (e.g., currently working on a very similar project).
  2. Commitment to review revisions: If you know that you will be unavailable to review a possible revision of a manuscript, please decline the original review invitation. It is important for revisions to be reviewed by the same set of original reviewers.
  3. Timeliness: It is critical that we receive your review within 30 days. If this is not feasible, please indicate this to the Action Editor (AE) as soon as possible. This is a metric we evaluate all reviewers on, and is a prerequisite for invitations to our Editorial Board.
  4. Content of your review: Articles published in the journal are expected to be grounded in strong theory and utilize strong methods. Unless a paper is purely conceptual (PPsych welcomes conceptual and review papers), please be sure to critique both of these elements, providing suggestions as appropriate. When noting a specific concern, please explain why this issue is a concern, and if possible, offer potential solutions for the authors to consider.
  5. Length: A first round review will typically consist of 7-10 comments (1.5-2 single spaced pages), focusing on the stated contribution, hypothesis development, methodology, analyses, and results.
  6. Format: Please number your comments. We (and the authors) appreciate hearing the strengths of the paper, so we would recommend starting your review with an assessment of the paper’s strengths. Please also distinguish major and minor comments by clearly labeling them. After reading your feedback, it is important for the authors to understand which of your comments and suggestions are the most important ones.
  7. Avoid editorial comments: It is best to avoid making direct assessments of the suitability of the paper in your review, such as “this paper should be given an opportunity for a revision.” Remember that the other reviewer and the editor may disagree with this assessment.
  8. Disclose all comments to the authors. If you are sharing specific concerns with the Editor, be sure to include those concerns in your letter to the authors as well.
  9. Avoid HARKing: Please refrain from comments that would be construed as encouraging of HARKing (Hypothesizing After Results are Known). Asking authors to change their hypotheses based on results, or asking them to add or drop hypotheses based on results are examples of HARKing. Asking authors to conduct additional analyses exploring different possibilities is perfectly fine as long as they are clearly labeled as supplemental/post hoc analyses.
  10. Tone of your review. Please be sure that the tone of your review is polite, constructive, and helpful. Thank you for helping us create a positive reviewing experience for all our authors!