1. Observations on assignment 3 - Reviews
General observations
Good effort overall! Some even at a level of good professional reviews in wording and substance, but big variation
Your rejection rate is 16,7%!!! ….far below average even for low tier journals…
“no substantial contribution” “theory missing and method wrong”, “objectives unclear and methodology faulty” or “does not fit to journal” cannot result in invited revision
however if your arguments are clear, then the editor is helped a lot independent of your recommendation
Sometimes the reports do not give any clear recommendation on what should be changed but still call it major revision
“Publish with major changes” as recommendation does not make sense
You are generally fine with respect to the tone of the review …
Thomas Heckelei
Publishing and Writing in Agricultural Economics

2. Observations on assignment 3 - Reviews
General observations – continued
Always provide comments in clearly distinguishable bullets (specific comments) or with numbering (general comments)  will help the authors with targeted response
Try to be as concrete as possible on what is the problem (“the link between theory and application is weak”….is a very weak and not helpful comment
Don’t go through my bullets on potential issues mechanically and list many things that are fine….point out and assess the contribution and then only problems
If you have more than 10 general comments, then your general comments are not general enough....
“Rejection in its current form” is confusing if not invitation to submit a revision comes with it
Clearly, the substance of the reviews improves with own knowledge of literature. Identification of contribution not possible without it
Thomas Heckelei
Publishing and Writing in Agricultural Economics

3. Observations on assignment 3 - Reviews
Observations on “General comments”
Always identify the stated and/or perceived contribution (not only say “there is one” or “ there is none”)
“Paper adds to the literature” is not sufficient. You need to say what and how large the contribution is relative to what has been published
Assess value of this contribution or potential contribution after changes  relevant for inviting revision or not
General types of contribution:
New theory, generalisation/extension of existing theories
New methodology, generalisation/extension/combination of existing methodologies which is better suited to test theory or use information provided by data
New application with respect to data used (more recent, new region, more representative for testing hypotheses….)
Thomas Heckelei
Publishing and Writing in Agricultural Economics

4. Observations on assignment 3 - Reviews
Observations on “General comments”
Providing just “further empirical evidence” on a topic is generally not sufficient for a top journal in the field  rejection if the specific value of that empirical evidence is not given (new area, contrasting results, more substantial dataset compare to before….)
A short paragraph first summarizing the referee’s own understanding of what the paper does is useful (done by majority but not all)
A comment on “missing theory”: some types of articles need very little explicit theory in text (e.g. application of established modelling systems)
Formalities not an issue for general comments unless the format is so bad that it inhibits the understanding of the whole paper
Thomas Heckelei
Publishing and Writing in Agricultural Economics

5. Observations on assignment 3 - Reviews
Observations on “specific comments”
It is ok if not everything presented in Tables and Figures is discussed in the text (but Tables and Figures should be mentioned somewhere in the text as a whole and they should serve a specific purpose in the paper)
Conclusions drawn not from own analysis and robustness of the model not demonstrated (if questionable) is worth a “general comment”
Be specific in your “specific comments”! Are paragraphs and sentences (tables and figures) logical, clear, relevant, in the right order…don’t be afraid of being “wrong”; identify exactly the location (section, paragraph, equation number or lines) of the parts your comment relates to
Statements like “some conclusions are not related to the research” don’t help. Identify which and why. More similar formulations found….
Thomas Heckelei
Publishing and Writing in Agricultural Economics