What to do when asked to #review a paper with glaring issues or one that is just clearly not ready?
I say identify the three biggest issues, write them down constructively and return it. There are good papers that deserve your reviewing time and effort more!
Of course, ideally this would be done quickly well before the deadline to save everyone time - I don't always manage this either.
@tschfflr I agree. The point about turnaround time for reviews got me thinking… Ideally, it should be as short as possible. However, we can’t just drop everything to review a paper when it comes in—so most of us tend to postpone it until the deadline. I wonder whether one could allocate “review slots” at the beginning of the year: when you get a request, you would definitely know whether you can agree to it. This wouldn’t be ASAP, but with a guaranteed response time.
@tschfflr Yes, that would be an alternative: you accept a max # of reviews per some period. Both would help you to avoid overload. However, you’d still have to make sure you’ve actually got the time.
There's this rule of thumb for time mgmt: you should only commit up to 60% of your time, the rest is a buffer for unexpected tasks. Iff you’re following this strictly, this is where (a limited number of) reviews could fit in. But I’m bad at this, so slots may work better for me.
@true_mxp I have one colleague who does return reviews within a few days - it impresses me immensely. One day maybe I can switch to a system where I only agree to a review if I can do it right away, e.g. "this week". But then yes, I'd have to close up shop after a certain number of reviews (per month?) so I'd be able to do other work.