Guide to reviewing manuscripts

Crazy-thanks to Dr. Colleen Nyberg for passing along this very helpful guide to reviewing manuscripts. Although the authors of the article are radiologists, their guidelines are fairly universal. Especially helpful is their comparison of informative and non-informative reviews. Both authors and reviewers should learn something new from this piece.

Slicing, dicing, reviewing?

I like to peruse the Chronicle of Higher Education fora. You'll find a vibrant, clever, helpful, and often volatile community there, comprising academics at all stages and venues. Today I thought I'd post a topic of interest to new investigators - what's your duty as a manuscript reviewer? The particular issue at hand is how to handle what you suspect to be an LPU, or "Least Publishable Unit", the smallest portion of a study that could conceivably stand alone as a publication, but the discussion that follows is more generally applicable. As both a reviewer and a reviewee, it's good to know the different ways people judge the work of others.