Scheduling Time to Review

Optica Publishing Group journals generally expect you to return your report within 14 days, with the following exceptions:

• Optics Letters asks for feedback within 7 days
  • These short letters should be worthy of rapid dissemination, so the review should also happen quickly to enable that.
• Advances in Optics and Photonics asks for feedback within 30 days 
  • These comprehensive reviews and tutorials can be more than 50 pages long, so extra time is allotted to complete a thorough review.

Before agreeing, look at your schedule – both professional and personal – to ensure that you have enough time to:

• Review the journal’s guidelines.
• Read the manuscript fully at least once.
• Begin to organize your thoughts and compose your feedback.
• Write, edit, and organize the review into a succinct but detailed summary.
• Submit the review online.

While the actual time needed to conduct a review varies between people and manuscripts, you should allow yourself 3–5 hours to complete the review.

If you agree to review a manuscript and later realize it will take longer than anticipated, you can request more time.