Is a 20 days period of time enough to review a journal paper for a first time even if the paper subject is in the heart of my research area?

Question

I have accepted a journal paper for a peer review for the first time. However, given a very limited time to review it, I’m no longer confident about whether to continue or come back from it.

The subject of the paper is my field of research for years. Also, I have many publications in the same area (optimization in wireless sensor networks). That is why I was excited about the experience and decide to accept reviewing the paper. Especially since I was waiting for the opportunity to take a first paper to review.

The problem is that I didn’t give much importance to the due date which is of 20 days. I thought they were enough time to review something you already know. And I didn’t know that practically, a review takes at least one month to three months, till now.

I am in the middle of the required period and I start doubting my decision on accepting to review. I want to ask what should I do.

Should I send an email to the editor explaining my position and declining the review? In that case, wouldn’t that affect my credibility and image in the community?

Or should I continue with the review and do as much as I can with the remaining time? In that case, I could perform a not very high-quality review (for the reason of the very short given time). Wouldn’t that affect again, my image and give a false idea about my capabilities? Another important point is that I could “harm” the paper author and not be “too fair” with the decision on his paper.

So, to resume my question, I have only 10 days or less left to review a journal paper for the first time, and don’t know if it is enough time even for a paper in the heart of my research area.

Answer 1

Yes, contact the editor with your concerns. I'll guess that the "deadline" may be more flexible than you think unless it is for a special issue. That seems unlikely and a failure on the editor's part not to provide more time initially.

If you can, give an estimate of how much time you'd need and mention the possibility you might need to withdraw.

The editor has a lot of experience with such things. It isn't an unusual case.

The "appropriate" length of review depends on many things, especially the complexity of the paper. But editors realize that their reviewers are also busy.

Answer 2

Reviewing a paper for the first time, even if there are lots of technical details to check, I would expect to take between two days and one week. The reason that a typical deadline is three months is that it may take a long time before you have those few days available for reviewing (especially if you have other papers waiting for review). So I would interpret a deadline of 20 days as basically saying "if you have time available now or in the near future to set aside for this review, please accept, but if not we would rather ask someone else to get a quick turn around".

Answer 3

I would recommend you connect with experienced people in your field to check how they conduct peer review. If everyone in your field would take 1-3 months full-time for a review, I suspect there would be very little actual research being done because everyone would be busy with conducting peer reviews only. If the editor sets the deadline to 20 days, then they also seem to expect you to work not more than a few days on it.

I am aware that theoretical math is much more difficult to review than more applied research, but the effort that you describe seems far off the scale. In my field, most people that I know spend approx. 2-8 hours for a review, depending on its complexity. Whether 20 days are sufficient totally depends on ones personal schedule. Of course, it is an absolutely legitimate request to extend the deadline if it seems not possible to finish the review within the suggested time. And it is always better to communicate time problems directly that to wait until the deadline extends.

If it is your first peer review, you should definitely seek for guidance in order to do it well, e.g. from your supervisor. At my university, there is even a semester-long peer review course, where people are taught to perform good peer reviews and conduct several real peer reviews for highly reputable journals throughout the course. I think it is a big mistake of the research community to simply assume that everyone knows how to perform a good peer review just because they have published research themselves.