Experienced reviewers will recognise that peer review is rarely straightforward. Some of the hardest moments tend to sit not in applying criteria for methodology or technique, but in how judgement is exercised, how a paper is being read, and where responsibility lies. Drawing on lived reviewing experience in complex, interdisciplinary settings, this reflection explores those tensions and what they mean for care, boundaries, and practice.
Peer review is often introduced through guidance on process, roles, and professional conduct. There is now a substantial body of clear, open-access material that explains how peer review works, what reviewers are expected to do, and how to approach the task responsibly. That guidance matters, and it is readily available. A companion resource page on this site – writing, authorship, and peer review – brings together selected, open-access guidance in this and related areas.
This post takes a different approach.
Rather than revisiting how peer review is meant to function, this post sits alongside existing guidance and reflects on what that guidance does not always capture. The reflections draw on my experience of reviewing manuscripts in complex, practice-oriented fields. Much of this experience comes from interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary work, including research that engages Indigenous and other place-based forms of knowledge. In these contexts, contribution is often not self-evident, standards are not always shared, and interpretation does a great deal of work.
The focus here is on judgement, interpretation, boundaries, and care, and especially on the aspects of reviewing that are rarely written down because they sit uncomfortably between formal guidance and lived experience.
Much of what makes peer review difficult does not stem from uncertainty about standards or formal requirements. It arises from uncertainty about how a paper is being read, what kind of contribution it is understood to be making, and where responsibility lies between authors, reviewers, and editors. These questions are not procedural. They are interpretive and relational, and they shape how judgement is exercised in practice.
These questions are playing out in an academic publishing landscape that is itself shifting. Moves towards more open and dialogic forms of review are often promoted as ways to humanise peer review, support learning, and increase transparency. In some contexts, these shifts do create space for richer engagement, including opportunities for reviewers and authors to learn from one another in real time.
At the same time, increased visibility of reviewers and review exchanges introduces new pressures. Reputational risk can increase, particularly when offering critical feedback on the work of senior scholars or dominant paradigms. Expectations of developmental input may intensify, and inequalities in time, confidence, and institutional support can become more visible rather than less.
The reflections that follow draw on experience of reviewing work concerned with sustainability, evaluation, and social change. They are not offered as a checklist or a set of rules, but as reflective prompts – an invitation to notice what is going on when we review, and how we might hold that practice more thoughtfully.
The first steps: making one’s stance visible
A simple but often overlooked part of collegial review is making explicit the stance from which one is reading and judging a paper. As reviewers, we inevitably approach a manuscript with a particular understanding of what kind of contribution it is trying to make, for example as a conceptual argument, an empirical study, a methodological intervention, or a practice-based reflection. That understanding is shaped not only by the paper itself, but by our disciplinary training, epistemic assumptions, and professional cultures, including often unspoken ideas about what counts as rigour, evidence, and contribution.
When that stance is left unstated, critiques can miss their mark. This is not because the critique comments are unreasonable, but because they are grounded in different assumptions about how knowledge is produced and assessed. In interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary work, including research that engages Indigenous and other place-based knowledge, these differences are especially pronounced. Reviewers may be responding to different traditions, standards, or audiences without realising that they are reading past one another.
Making one’s stance visible helps authors and editors understand how judgements are being formed, and from where. It also creates a clearer basis for dialogue when interpretations differ, and for distinguishing between issues of clarity, disagreements of perspective, and genuine limitations in the manuscript itself.
Reviewing as collective sense-making
Peer review is often framed as an individual responsibility, something a reviewer does alone and submits as a report. It is better understood as a form of collective sense-making, in which editors, reviewers, and authors are jointly involved in negotiating what counts as a worthwhile contribution, how claims are interpreted, and which forms of evidence and reasoning are taken seriously.
This collective dimension becomes particularly important in fields characterised by complexity, plural knowledges, and contested purposes. In such settings, what counts as a worthwhile contribution, and whose contributions are recognised, often requires some interpretive work rather than being immediately apparent.
For us as reviewers, this means recognising that our task is not simply to judge whether a manuscript meets a standard, but to help make visible the contribution it is attempting to make. It also involves being attentive to how that contribution may be read and understood by different audiences. A useful orienting question is not “Is this good?” but “What is this trying to do, and on what terms should it be read?”
Approaching review in this way can temper the urge to resolve ambiguity too quickly. In complex work, some uncertainty is not a flaw but a feature of the terrain. Reviewers can support collective sense-making by naming where interpretation is doing important work, and by inviting authors to be clearer about how they want readers to engage with that uncertainty.
Responsibility, boundaries, and labour
Most codes of conduct emphasise that reviewers should be constructive, fair, and supportive, while also noting that they are not responsible for rescuing work that remains very underdeveloped. In practice, however, the boundary between constructive guidance and overreach can be difficult to hold.
These boundary questions also sit alongside a more basic issue of labour. Much of the work of peer review is unpaid, time-intensive, and largely invisible, particularly within an academic publishing environment that depends on voluntary academic and practitioner effort. As expectations of thoughtful, dialogic review have grown, so too has the amount of work involved, often without any corresponding recognition or support.
This helps explain why it has become increasingly difficult for editors to secure reviewers, especially for complex, interdisciplinary, or practice-based manuscripts. The issue is not a lack of commitment to scholarly standards. It is the accumulation of unacknowledged labour, combined with rising expectations, that makes saying yes harder to sustain over time.
This is particularly true for complex, practice-oriented manuscripts, where coherence may be emergent rather than fully articulated. In these cases, reviewers may find themselves clarifying arguments, making connections explicit, or articulating analytical logic that remains implicit in the text.
The question is not whether such insights are helpful, but where responsibility lies for acting on them. Supporting authors to improve their work is part of the role. Doing the core analytical or conceptual work for a paper is not. One way of holding this boundary is to frame comments in ways that return agency to the authors. Rather than supplying synthesis, reviewers can point to where synthesis is needed, describe what is currently missing, and explain why it matters for the paper’s contribution. Holding this boundary does not resolve the wider problem of unrecognised review labour, but it can help make visible where responsibility becomes unclear, and how easily reviewers end up carrying it.
Reviewing well, in this sense, involves noticing when one begins to do work on behalf of the manuscript, rather than responding to it as written. That moment is often felt as a subtle discomfort, a sense of doing work on behalf of the manuscript rather than responding to it. Treating that discomfort as a signal, rather than something to push through, can help reviewers remain supportive without taking on responsibilities that are not theirs.
Judgement in context
Much of what has been discussed so far concerns how review works in practice. This section turns more directly to where judgement comes from, and why that matters. Peer review involves judgement, not simply error-checking. As reviewers, we interpret what counts as rigour, relevance, and contribution through our own epistemological, disciplinary, professional, and cultural lenses. That judgement is always exercised from somewhere.
Acknowledging positionality in review is not about foregrounding the reviewer, but about making visible the standpoint from which a paper has been read and evaluated. Being explicit about how we have understood a manuscript, and the assumptions that inform that understanding, can help distinguish between issues of clarity, disagreements of perspective, and genuine limitations in the work.
In trans-disciplinary, justice-oriented, or Indigenous-informed research, these questions become especially salient. What counts as good evidence, appropriate method, or meaningful impact cannot be separated from context, values, and power. Reviewing well in such settings requires attentiveness to how claims are made, whose knowledge is centred, and how evaluative judgements are being formed, rather than reliance on inherited norms alone.
Making judgement more visible, rather than treating it as purely technical, supports more honest and constructive review conversations. It also helps authors and editors understand how and why a piece of work is being read in particular ways.
Holding judgement with care
All of this is playing out in an academic publishing landscape that is itself changing. Moves towards more open and dialogic forms of review are often presented as ways to support learning, transparency, and engagement. In some contexts, they do create space for richer exchange between reviewers and authors. At the same time, increased visibility introduces new pressures. Reputational risk can increase, expectations of extensive input can intensify, and existing inequalities in time, confidence, and institutional support can become more visible rather than less.
Seen in this light, peer review is not simply a procedural hurdle or a professional obligation. It is a situated practice in which reviewers continually make judgements about how a paper is being read, what kind of contribution it is understood to be making, and where responsibility lies for strengthening or reshaping it. Reviewing well is not about doing more, but about being attentive to how judgement is exercised, how readings are framed, and when care includes knowing where to stop.
If you’re working in a similar space and would like to talk through questions around writing or peer review, you’re welcome to get in touch. I’m particularly open to short, well-defined advisory, writing, or reflection support, and am always happy to talk through what might be useful.
