Abstract
The peer review process is at the heart of the scientific process. When peer review is used, it is usually for the purpose of providing quality control on the advancement of scientific ideas. In this manuscript we examine the experiences and perspectives of a sample of criminal justice scholars regarding their roles as reviewers for manuscripts submitted to scholarly journals. In general, we find that reviewers expect to review, feel it is a professional responsibility, and enjoy doing reviews. A majority of reviewers perceive peer review as fair and editors seriously consider reviews. Regarding patterns of writing reviews, respondents of higher rank and published more frequently complete more reviews. However, most receive no credit at their institutions for doing reviews, although many claim to derive importance for their own research from reviewing.
Notes
1. Web‐based surveys often have substantially lower response rates than other traditional methods of survey distribution (Couper, Citation2000). Couper argues that some web‐based surveys garner less than a 10% response rate when only one invitation is used.