I recently surpassed 200 manuscripts reviewed, and you know what that means: time to look back on how many manuscripts I’ve been asked to review, the recommendations I’ve made, and how long it generally takes me to submit after I’ve agreed.

Invitations Received

I only started keeping track of this in January 2023. But since then I’ve been invited to review at least 172 manuscripts for 97 unique journals. Mostly for criminology/criminal justice, but also sociology and, increasingly, public health. Here’s a plot showing the cumulative number of invitations I’ve received per year.

Looks like things have slowed down quite a bit year-over-year…perhaps because I started declining more in 2024. Years ago I was consistently agreeing to review 20-25 manuscripts. Lately I’ve cut that down to 10-15. There’s still 4+ months left in 2025, but I don’t anticipate reviewing more than 3-4 papers in that span.

Recommendations Made

I’ve kept track of the recommendations I’ve made since the beginning. So over the past ~10 years, I’ve recommended rejecting 99 papers (49%), R&R’ing 86 papers (42%), and conditionally or outright accepting 16 papers (8%). Here’s the yearly breakdown.

I’ve recommended rejecting 13 of the last 20 manuscripts I’ve reviewed (65%). Maybe I’ve been less lenient these past 2 years than I was earlier in my career, maybe I’ve been getting asked to review lower-quality papers, or maybe a bit of both. But I will say the papers I get asked to review on police use of deadly force tend to be lower quality. Some colleagues and I elaborate on the problems with that line of literature in this forthcoming book chapter.

Need for Speed

I started reliably tracking how long it took me to submit my reviews around 2019. And I’m proud to say that, apart from a few outliers (including one paper I completely spaced on until the editors pinged me), I’ve been good about getting my reviews in on time. Even with those outliers, overall, my average turnaround time is ~25 days.

In Closing

I’ve received my share of helpful and unhelpful reviews, and I much prefer the former as I’m sure we all do. So the Golden Rule of peer review should be to review unto others as you’d have them review unto you. That doesn’t mean submitting favorable reviews of bad papers. Reject away if they’re bad - just be kind. As I’ve said before, we should all strive to be good reviewers - meaning we take them seriously (don’t phone it in), we’re reasonably prompt, and we offer constructive feedback instead of snark and condescension. A rejection stings enough on its own - no need to pour salt in the wound.