I’ve writ­ten briefly on this before. For an excel­lent and more detailed dis­cus­sion of what is involved, there is a series of excel­lent posts on Pat Thomson’s blog:

1. Ref­er­ee­ing a jour­nal arti­cle part 1: reading
2. Ref­er­ee­ing a jour­nal arti­cle part 2: mak­ing a recommendation
3. Ref­er­ee­ing a jour­nal arti­cle part 3: writ­ing the feedback

If every reviewer fol­lowed her advice, my life as an edi­tor would be much eas­ier, and the qual­ity of research would be improved.

Related Posts:

• Join­ing an edi­to­r­ial board
• Why ref­eree?
• Always lis­ten to reviewers
• Writ­ing a ref­eree report
• Should you make your work­ing papers public?