New Review Process (beginning December 1, 2015)
The M&SOM editorial board believes that a referee report serves two purposes: (a) evaluation for the benefit of the editors; and (b) feedback for the benefit of the authors. A good report helps the editors to: (i) identify papers with high potential; and (ii) provide the authors with a roadmap to bring out that potential. This roadmap might be very short in the case of a high-quality submission/revision.
Regardless whether a submitted paper is suitable for publication in M&SOM, a good report provides constructive comments on the paper’s strengths and areas of potential improvement. There are no perfect papers, and perfection is not the bar for publication. Our goal is to publish papers that ask and rigorously answer interesting and relevant questions.
To standardize our review process and effectively serve authors and the review team, the M&SOM editorial board would like all reviewers to clearly answer the following questions. (To facilitate this process, reviewers are encouraged to use the attached form or, if they prefer, to copy and paste the questions into their report.)
1. What is the paper about? [Please provide a brief summary of the paper.]
2. What are the paper’s strengths and weaknesses? [Please comment on strengths in relation to (a) Innovation(research question, modeling, methodology, etc.); (b) Relevance (research question, findings, etc.); and (c) Rigor(appropriate methodology, correctness of analysis, etc.).]
3. What, if any, are the major areas of potential improvement? [Please focus on key requirements/suggestions that, if appropriately addressed, would make the paper publishable. If you see insurmountable obstacles, please clearly describe your concerns. You can best serve the editors and the authors by being specific and by providing constructive comments accompanied, where possible, by actionable suggestions. A laundry list of all possible improvements is not helpful. Likewise, ambiguous and/or vague criticisms should be avoided.]
4. What, if any, are the minor areas of potential improvement? [Again, please be specific.]
5. What is your recommendation - Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, or Reject? [Note: The reviewer’s opinion is advisory only.]
The managing editor Frances Moskwa has helped me to modify ScholarOne so that this new process is now in place. By doing so, M&SOM can continue to serve as a platform to facilitate “mutual learning” for the entire community.
Thank you,
Chris
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Christopher Tang
Professor
University of California-Los Angeles
Los Angeles CA
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