Classical and Quantum Gravity is proud to recognise excellence in peer review and acknowledge our reviewers for their invaluable contribution to the journal.

Bernard Kelly, University of Maryland, Baltimore County & NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Congratulations to Dr Bernard Kelly who has won our newly introduced ‘Reviewer of the Year‘ title for his excellent referee reports throughout 2016.  Below Dr Kelly gives us some insight into his process of reviewing and tells us a little bit more about himself.

Tell us how you go about reviewing an article?

First I sit on it for a week or so, thinking “Sounds appropriate. I’ll take a look when I get the chance”. And then the next thing, the journal is pinging me with a follow-up notification, which is when I realise I’ve let too much time slip by.

I read the title, abstract, gloss over the Introduction, and try to assess how mathematically involved the text is, and how much overlap there is with my own areas of expertise (or at least competence). I don’t expect to be familiar with all aspects of the research, but if it’s 50% or better (in whatever fuzzy metric I’m using), I think it’s worth giving it a serious look. Occasionally, I find that what I thought was going to be a good fit wasn’t on closer inspection, and I end up declining.

Now I print the paper out: in colour, if I’m feeling extravagant with my lab’s resources, but usually in B & W. It’s impractical to mark up PDFs on a laptop; perhaps it’d be better on a full-size tablet, but I don’t have one yet. I break out two pens — usually blue & red.

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