Morning all. Hope that everyone's well and has had a good week.

I've had a request off an academic within my department at university to review a paper for them prior to submission for publication. Being in the first year of my PhD I'm treating it very much as an honour to be asked. This academic, albeit at the early stage of his career, has published countless papers in high profile journals so I want to make a good impression. I did speak to another one of his PhD students (sorry this person isn't my own supervisor) who said that the person is '...testing me, to see if I can handle it'.

I hope I can and want to give constructive feedback (am in the Social Sciences department - sorry not trying to give too much away in case he reads this forum) as conscious of job opportunities once the studying's complete. Maybe it would help to have experience of reviewing articles for people who could be interviewing me...

Anyway, the question I'm asking on here is what's expected of me in this review process? On first reading through the paper (it's a long 45 page one!) it seems perfect in terms of the style, structure and logical flow.... Any tips would be appreciated.

S x

Hi- sounds like you're right to grab this opportunity with both hands! My advice would be to treat the paper the same as you would if one of your peers had asked you to proofread and forget this person's 'higher status'. If it really is as good as it looks say how much you admire it and why- that will make as good a scholarly impression as tearing it to bits, I would have thought.

if it helps, there is a PGR Tips on peer review although it sounds as if this won't tell you anything new:
http://www.vitae.ac.uk/CMS/files/PGR_Tips_Issue_19_May08.pdf

good luck,
Tennie

45 pages is quite a big ask - remember that it is you doing him the favour here!