I reg­u­larly get emails from peo­ple want­ing to be ref­er­ees for the Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Fore­cast­ing, usu­ally with an accom­pa­ny­ing CV. This is not how the process works. Ref­er­ees are almost always selected because they have pre­vi­ously writ­ten papers on a sim­i­lar topic to the man­u­script under review. If you want to be a ref­eree, then write good papers and get them pub­lished in schol­arly jour­nals. Very quickly you will be invited to ref­eree papers in the same jour­nals. But until you have demon­strated your own research skills, no edi­tor is going to trust you to assess the research of some­one else.

This week I was asked to review a paper that I had seen before. It had been sub­mit­ted to a jour­nal a few months ago and I had writ­ten a detailed report describ­ing some prob­lems with the paper, and not­ing a large num­ber of typos that needed fix­ing. That jour­nal had rejected the paper, the authors had sub­mit­ted it to a sec­ond jour­nal, and the paper ended up on my desk again for review. I was inter­ested to see what the authors had done about the prob­lems I had described. Alas, noth­ing had changed. Not even the typos. It was iden­ti­cal to the pre­vi­ous ver­sion with every error still there. So I sent the same report off to the sec­ond jour­nal advis­ing the edi­tor of the sit­u­a­tion. I’m not sure what the authors imag­ined would hap­pen. It is not uncom­mon for a paper to be sent to the same reviewer after it has been rejected by one jour­nal, espe­cially when the field of poten­tial review­ers for some top­ics is quite small. This paper was on an exten­sion to the auto­matic time series mod­el­ling pro­ce­dures pro­vided in the fore­cast pack­age for R. Since I am the author of the fore­cast pack­age for R, the prob­a­bil­ity of me being asked to review the paper is approx­i­mately

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Being on the edi­to­r­ial board of a jour­nal is a lot of work. I’m cur­rently Editor-​​​​in-​​​​Chief of the Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Fore­cast­ing and pre­vi­ously I’ve been The­ory & Meth­ods Edi­tor of the Aus­tralian & New Zealand Jour­nal of Sta­tis­tics. Although it is time-​​​​consuming and often goes un-​​​​noticed, there are some impor­tant rewards that make it worth­while in my opin­ion. You are forced to read care­fully a lot of papers in your area of inter­est. Every­one intends read­ing the papers pub­lished in their area, but this activ­ity often gets neglected for more urgent activ­i­ties. When you are an edi­tor or asso­ciate edi­tor, you have to read the papers, and you have to read them thor­oughly. That way you are forced to keep up-​​​​to-​​​​date with new ideas. You become bet­ter known in your field. This tends to lead to invi­ta­tions to speak at con­fer­ences, write invited papers, etc. You get to shape the dis­ci­pline to some extent, at least once you are a man­ag­ing edi­tor. For exam­ple, you can arrange a spe­cial issue or a review paper on a topic that you think needs address­ing. It brings with it some pres­tige. You get to see a lot of the lat­est research before every­one else, although these days, that is becom­ing less of

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There are sev­eral rea­sons why researchers should be will­ing to pro­vide ref­eree reports. You learn a lot. If the paper is in your area, then writ­ing a ref­eree report forces you to read it very care­fully and engage closely with the research of other peo­ple in your field. There’s no bet­ter way of under­stand what is going on in your field. You get bet­ter known by the research lead­ers in your area. It is essen­tial to your research career to develop an inter­na­tional rep­u­ta­tion for a high stan­dard of schol­ar­ship. Once known, you may get asked to sub­mit an invited paper to the jour­nal, become an asso­ciate edi­tor of the jour­nal, write a com­men­tary on another paper, etc. Oppor­tu­ni­ties will open up if you are known to be a good ref­eree. You get to see the lat­est research before every­one else. Often, an author won’t release a work­ing paper or pre-​​​​print before the paper has gone through a round of ref­er­ee­ing (and some authors keep things to them­selves until a paper is accepted). So you get a head-​​​​start on every­one else if you ref­eree the paper. It might lead you to develop some of your own ideas and write a new paper that builds on the results. If you sub­mit papers

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As an edi­tor, I like to see ref­eree reports com­pris­ing three sec­tions: A gen­eral sum­mary of the paper and the con­tri­bu­tion it makes. You need to high­light here what is new and inter­est­ing about the paper, as well as give a sum­mary in a few sen­tences. The major prob­lems that need address­ing.  This is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant sec­tion of your report where you explain the main prob­lems. The edi­tor will read this very care­fully when decid­ing whether to accept, reject or invite a revi­sion, so you need to make sure that any prob­lems are clearly explained here. If you think the paper should be rejected, then you have to make a good case in this sec­ond sec­tion. On the other hand, if you think it is a great paper that deserves pub­li­ca­tion, please explain what is so good about it. Minor things such as typos or points of clar­i­fi­ca­tion. These are often less impor­tant issues, but need cor­rect­ing before pub­li­ca­tion. Some ref­eree reports com­bine sec­tions 2 and 3 and that makes it much harder to fig­ure out what is impor­tant and what are minor com­ments. If the paper is def­i­nitely not worth pub­lish­ing, and you have explained some very seri­ous flaws in sec­tion 2, then it is accept­able

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