The Fun of Reviewing

Keith Robison is more than happy to take on more manuscript reviews — though he adds that he wouldn’t want to do it full-time — and he discusses some of his experiences with reviewing. He writes that he enjoys is but occasionally isn’t satisfied with his reviews, particularly when he can’t quite figure out why he is “uneasy” with a paper and when he looks at a really good paper. “If the paper is truly good, you really don’t have much to do,” he says. The most satisfying ones, he says, occur when he sees a poor paper. “In most cases, there is a core of something interesting, but often either the paper is horridly organized and/or there are gaping holes in it. It can be fun to take someone's manuscript, figure out how you would rearrange & re-plan it, and then write out a description of that,” he writes.