Peer review

Like many academics, I spend some of my time reviewing submissions for academic journals, publishers, and funding bodies. I also like measuring things and keeping track of them, even if there’s no point in doing so.¹ I think it can be useful to share this sort of information – no one really knows how much reviewing other people do, which makes it hard to know if you are doing a lot or a little of something. I have no idea if I do more or less reviewing than most people in my field – I know some who do more, but other who do less. In any case, here is a brief record of the reviews I have done during my career.

I reviewed my first paper for a journal in 2012, and since then I have reviewed 143 submissions for 47 different journals. That works out as about 11.4 reviews per year since I started reviewing, and 16.2 per year in the last five years.

Here’s a plot of how many reviews I’ve done over time:

And here are the ten journals I’ve reviewed for the most:

I’ve also reviewed seven book proposals for four different publishers, and six grant proposals for four different funding bodies.

I’m almost always happy to review things if they are related to something I know about, so if you’re an editor looking for someone to review something, please get in touch – especially if you work in publishing and will give me free books in return for a review. I love books.²