How to review journal manuscripts: A lesson learnt from the world's excellent reviewers

• Synthesizing journal manuscript reviewing approaches by excellent reviewers.
• 12 content and 15 process issues considered by top reviewers were identified.
• Three approaches (content-oriented, process-oriented, and mixed) were identified.

Considering the lack of a common and structured approach to evaluate manuscripts for academic journals, this study examines top-quality reviewers' perceptions of peer review and synthesizes their approaches to produce a reference guide to help reviewers, especially inexperienced scholars, understand the process. Using qualitative data collected from 24 recipients of excellent reviewer awards in tourism, hospitality, social sciences, and management, the findings of this study show that reviewers across different fields commonly regard the peer review process positively as an objective assessment mechanism that can improve the quality of research output. Though it does not identify a single and structured approach to reading and reviewing manuscripts, this study derives 12 “content” and 15 “process” issues considered by top-quality reviewers during the process. It is also shown that excellent reviewers adopt one of three general procedures, namely the content- or process-oriented approach, or a mixture of both, when they review manuscripts.