Thomas Oatley on Peer Reviewing

12 January 2013, 1300 EST

Tom responds to Peter Henne’s questions.

1. Is there an objective standard for “so what?” No, there is not. Yet, this doesn’t make it fully subjective. Any good paper will explain why what it reports matters, and few papers under-sell their findings. A reviewer’s job is to evaluate the degree to which those assertions are warranted. A good rule of thumb here might be, if you are struggling to decide whether a paper you are reviewing is important, it isn’t.

2. When is a methodological flaw a disqualifier? Always. Whether such flaws warrant a reject or an R&R depends upon the severity of the flaw and the potential significance of the results once the flaw is corrected.

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Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.