Reviewer Guidelines

Thank you for agreeing to review this JMO manuscript submission. As a respected member of the community of management scholars, your advice to your fellow researchers on how to develop their work makes a valued contribution to them, and to our development as an academic community.

These notes accompany the JMO Referee Evaluation Form.

Your contribution

Our aim at JMO is to match the best global standards for reviewing submitted papers. As authors, we would probably have a fair measure of agreement on what a good review process feels like. It would likely be one that provides:

Helpful assessment of our paper’s strengths, and diagnosis of its problem areas;
Clear, constructive advice on how to develop the paper;
A friendly tone that is genuinely seeking to improve the strength of the paper and does not take the reviewer’s role as a licence to vent spleen;
Prompt feedback while the paper’s ideas are still fresh in our minds, to allow us to complete and publish the paper and move on to other projects.

To do justice to the author's work, we would expect at least two pages of feedback inserted at Notes to the Author in the Referee Evaluation Form.

Please do not discuss the manuscript with another person. This is a blind peer review process and information in manuscripts must have guaranteed confidentiality.

These are the attributes we aim for in the JMO review process. You might also like to check the website of the Academy of Management Journal for its reviewer guidelines: http://aom.pace.edu/amjnew/ and the Academy of Management Review guidelines at http://aom.pace.edu.amr/reviewerguide.html You will quickly recognise the intellectual debts incurred here.

What to look for

You will of course bring to your reading of this paper the full scope of your experience, and your advice on any aspect of the paper will be valued. You may find the following broad questions useful:

Is the paper well grounded in the contemporary literature on the topic? Does it help the reader to connect this paper to previous work in the field?
Does the paper make clear the contribution it aims to make to that literature? In your view, is the contribution useful? Important? Substantive?
Does the paper present a coherent argument for its position? Are positions, propositions or hypotheses in the paper persuasively developed? If an empirical investigation is reported, is the choice of material, methods and analyses used appropriate? And appropriately used? Do conclusions drawn from an enquiry follow persuasively from the argument and investigation reported? How fully does the paper succeed in making its contribution?
Are references accurate and timely, and consistent throughout? Do in-text citations appear in References, and vice-versa as appropriate?
Are heading levels appropriate and concise?
Has ethical clearance been shown for research process? Are ethical processes followed included in the body of the article?
Is the written expression of the paper clear, concise and accessible to academics with an interest in this field? (Note that JMO papers are copy-edited before publication: it is not part of the reviewer’s task to correct language, though an indication of any flawed grammar, spelling, etc. will be appreciated.)

What happens now?

We ask you please to:

Note that our database requires review comments in one document, emailed as an attachment, retaining the review document name as is.
Complete the electronic Referee Evaluation Form including:
- Journal and document ID (JMZ00010), manuscript title and date.
- Your review comments/recommendations inserted at Notes to the Author (to be conveyed to author(s)).
- Provide brief confidential Notes for the Publisher (NOT conveyed to the author).
If you wish to make annotations on the manuscript itself, using Track Changes or highlighting your comments, please append the annotated paper to the Review Form (See explanatory note below).
Save as one document, retaining the identifier code name, and email as an attachment to JMOeditorial@e-contentmanagement.com within the required time frame.

Within 2 weeks of receiving all reviews, your remarks will be conveyed, with other referee comments, to the author(s) together with a summary report from the shepherd editor for the issue. The shepherd editor will correspond with authors and reviewers on any subsequent revision to the paper that may be requested, until a decision is reached on publication.

Thank you again for the important contribution you are about to make to the work of your fellow researchers and to the development of management studies.

Annotations to Manuscript using Track Changes

Our electronic processing system requires Reviews as one document only. Please assist by ensuring that your annotated manuscript is appended at the foot of the Referee Evaluation Form. To preserve Tracked Changes in the paper, turn off Track Changes at the head of the manuscript document then copy and paste the completed Review Form into the head of the manuscript. The track changes will remain and not alter the Review Form. Then re-save with the form name (e.g. JMZ00123R1review).

Thank you for your cooperation.