Referee reports on revised manuscripts

Most referee reports on revised manuscripts will be prepared when the manuscript has been in the “revise and resubmit” category (which JME calls “reject/revise”) on the first round.

The handling editor’s letter should have specified a clear set of revision instructions to the author, indicating the challenges that an author must overcome if his manuscript is to move to a conditional acceptance category. Frequently, the editor will highlight a subset of the recommendations of the referee(s) on the prior round that must be dealt with. The editor may have also added some additional priority items for a revision.

The author(s) are directed to prepare a series of materials along with the revised paper: as a referee, you may want to review these revision and resubmission instructions before preparing your report.

We suggest that you follow 5 steps in preparing a referee report on a revised manuscript.

1. Read the paper, making notes about whether the revised paper is successful on its own terms, clearly demonstrating a contribution to the literature. Mark spots in the manuscript where the economics and/or the exposition could have been improved;

2. Read the editor and referee report(s) from the prior round. Based on your reading of the paper, evaluate whether the manuscript satisfactorily met the requirements laid out by the editor and fulfilled the recommendations of the referee. Make some notes on how successfully the requirements were fulfilled;

3. Read the author(s) “response to editor comments” and “response to referee reports” –- these two documents should appear at the back of resubmission -- to understand how the author(s) view the resubmission;

4. Building on your notes from parts 1 and 2, write a report for the authors, including both a general appraisal of the revised paper and a set of specific comments structured around their response to the editor instructions.

5. Building on your notes from parts 1 and 2, write a letter to the editor that includes the following elements: (a) your overall recommended action -- which should be "reject", "accept with major revisions", or "accept with minor revisions -- on the manuscript, together with a brief explanation of this recommendation; (b) your assessment of the extent to which the author(s) of the revised manuscripts did so in line with the recommendation of the referee and editor.