Reviewers as developmental coaches

Abstract

As the two of us (as editors) begin putting together our third volume of theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science(JAMS), and look ahead to a second editorial “tour of duty,” we believe it is an appropriate time to reflect on our experiences to date and offer some guidance to our journal reviewers. In doing so, it is our aim to provide a fresh perspective on the reviewer’s role. Our field has a long history of articles and editorials offering excellent and practical guidance on writing reviews (e.g., Bagchi et al.2017; Lehmann and Winer2017; Moorman et al.2019), so rather than simply echoing this earlier advice, in what follows we use the analogy of hit song-making. We certainly encourage reviewers to abide by the best practices highlighted in the aforementioned articles, but our main objective for this editorial is to inspire reviewers to re-envision their role when evaluating manuscripts for possible publication inJAMS.