Review Process

Overview of the submission process:

  1. Research documents are accepted on the Submissions webpage.
  2. Upon receiving a submission, the PPR Editorial Committee will select reviewers from a list of eight–10 candidates provided by you based on their relevant expertise, stature in the field, and quality of prior PPRs. Suppose you have provided a list of scholars you do not wish to review your document. In that case, these will be excluded from consideration.
  3. We hope to produce outside reviews within four weeks of submission.
  4. Authors retain complete control over what they put in their documents, including whether to make changes in response to anything or everything in their peer pre-reviews. 

Review Details

  1.  We ask peer pre-reviewers to write more constructive reviews than they would for a scholarly journal and to do so much faster. Our reviewers are expected to read the entire document and make helpful suggestions. Suppose reviewers receive the same paper or proposal for review again later (e.g., by an academic journal or funding body). In that case, we encourage them to disclose their participation in the PPR program at that time.
  2. Preparing a peer review for a scholarly journal rarely takes more than a day or two. Most of the 2-3+ month wait for authors is the time it takes for the journal to find the reviewer and for the reviewers to begin work. To expedite the process, we offer reviewers financial compensation to accept and complete the assignment faster, gaining speed without losing review quality.
  3. Reviews are done sequentially, one reviewer at a time, with author revision before sending out the second round, rather than simultaneously as with a journal. This ensures that the value of the feedback progresses with each review.  
  4. Reviews are double-blind: authors and reviewers are unaware of each other’s identities (unless each chooses otherwise).
  5. Participants may be expected to provide feedback through a short survey, which will be used to generate metrics on the effectiveness of the PPR program and to acknowledge assistance from the Alexander and Diviya Magaro Peer Pre-Review Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science.