Referee

Reports for Research Journal Submissions1

Examples below are authentic. They represent referee comments on a paper submission to a research journal which resulted in a revise-and-resubmit (R&R)
decision. Identifying information has been removed. Accounting Journal and Marketing Journal are pseudonyms rather than titles of actual publications.
Move

Subordinate Steps Accounting Journal

Reviewer (#1)

Accounting Journal
Reviewer (#2)

Marketing Journal
Reviewer (#1)

Marketing Journal
Reviewer (#2)

This paper investigates how the

experience and perceived
knowledge advantage of older
client management intimidates
younger, less experienced audit
staff and, consequently, affects
the content of the audit
workpapers. The primary
experimental results suggest

This study examines how the

interaction between staff-level
auditors and client management
affect auditing students
perceptions and their decisions
regarding the collection of audit
evidence. The study first uses a
survey methodology

The manuscript aims at

comparing two competing
conceptualizations of sales
controls with respect to their
predictive validity. The
manuscript claims to present
three "intriguing" findings:
(1) "[T]he O&A index

I believe the research question is

very interesting. Further, the
experiment is well done and
there are some interesting
results.

I believe that examining the social

dynamics between staff auditors
and members of the client
management is a potentially
interesting research question. In
that respect, the issues raised in
the paper are of relevance to
audit practice and to accounting
research. In general, I feel that
the
paper has been reasonably well-
written.

NA

You spell out the need: (1) to

reconcile O&As Behavioral versus
Outcome control measure with
J&Cs Output and Process control
measures, they should be
measuring nearly the same
concepts, and (2) to evaluate if
the effect of these two controls
on one of your performance
criterion is not linear but an
inverted U.

NA

Summarizing
paper
submission

Providing
positive
feedback

This table appears in a discussion of reviews for journal submissions on ProsWrite.com.

Commenting
on negative
quality
issues

Maintaining
goodwill

3a

Providing
interpretations

While I agree staff auditors

attempt to gain approval from
the client, they also attempt to
gain approval from their superiors
on the audit team.

3b

Posing questions

NA

3c

Making
suggestions for
revision

I think your discussion may

address this line of thinking by
discussing self-doubt in
abilities and knowledge, but I
think the discussion will be more
complete if the desire to
of staff to manage their superiors
impressions is explicitly discussed.
This could even be in a footnote.

NA

Incremental contribution and

Theory
1. While the premise of the paper
is that . . . I feel that the
development of theory does not

Isn't it more likely that if a staff
auditor does not follow the audit
plan and does not seek out
appropriate evidence, he/she will
encounter
The paper needs to develop this
argument by using auditing
literature and then compare and
contrast that with the
expectations that would be
developed from psychology.

NA

It surprises me that the authors

were surprised by the second
finding, . . .

NA

If this has been known for almost

a decade, why then call it
"intriguing"? Isn't the finding then
a mere confirmation?

NA

I think the authors should try to

explain it in a better way.

some improvements are
recommendable. The authors
should always report both
measures of internal consistency
reliability Moreover, the
authors should rule out the
possibility that the nonlinear
effect is only a methodological
artifact (e.g., roof effect).
NA

you need to extract

Extent of Supervision and
Absence of Bottom-Line
Orientation from their index
they resemble Process control
and Output control (flipped),
respectively, from J&C. You could
then evaluate if the two
process measures and the two
output measures share greater
association than a process and
output measure,
Through this, and/or similar
analysis, I feel you have the
potential of creating a good,
strong, thoughtful paper.