Academic Evaluation

Framework for reviewing, critiquing, and strengthening a research article draft before submission, and for responding to editors and referees afterwards. Distilled from Cargill & O'Connor, Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps (2009), Ch. 3, 13–15, 17.

Progressive disclosure: SKILL.md gives the 13 referee criteria, the seven reviewer-comment categories, and the topic index. Detailed checklists and response guides live in references/. Annotated review fragments live in examples/.

When to Activate

Activate this skill when any of the following is true:

• The user says "review", "check", "evaluate", "critique", "is this good", "what's wrong with", or "strengthen" in connection with a manuscript or a section.
• The user wants to know what a referee would say, or to pre-review a draft before submission.
• The user is responding to editor/referee comments, deciding how to handle "revise and resubmit", or recovering from rejection.
• The user asks to categorise reviewer comments or write a response letter.

Do NOT activate for drafting new text — that is the academic-writing skill. This skill is for judging or defending text that already exists.

The 13 Referee Criteria

These are the questions referees typically answer when reviewing a science manuscript (Cargill Fig. 3.1 / 13.2). For each, the table shows where the referee looks for evidence.

The standard recommendation options a referee ticks:

• Accept without alteration
• Accept after minor revision
• Review again after major revision
• Reject

Seven Categories of Reviewer Comment

When responding to comments, first sort each one into a category (Cargill Ch. 14). The category determines the response strategy — see references/response-strategies.md.

1. The aims of the study are not clear.
2. The theoretical premise or "school of thought" is challenged.
3. The experimental design or analysis methods are challenged.
4. You are asked to supply additional data.
5. You are asked to remove information or discussion.
6. The conclusions are considered incorrect, weak, or too strong.
7. Unspecific negative comments ("poorly designed", "badly organised", "English is poor").

Four Rules of Thumb for Responding

1. It is rare that the referee is completely right and the author completely wrong — or vice versa.
2. The object is to accommodate the referee's comments without compromising the paper's message (story).
3. Always show the editor you are doing everything possible to improve the manuscript.
4. Rejection and criticism do not automatically mean the science is bad or the writing poor — consider other journals, additional work, or rewriting.

Topic Index — Read on Demand

Quick Reference

Referee's report — typical structure

A referee report usually has: a recommendation tick-box list (above), then a narrative covering the strongest points first, then specific section-by- section comments, then minor points ("other queries pencilled on the manuscript").

The two most powerful tools for responding

• Citing the published literature — published work is already vetted; compare/contrast findings to support your argument.
• Improving manuscript structure — revise headings, topic sentences, and section flow (the techniques in academic-writing).

Red flags that usually trigger rejection

• Aims not stated or not matched by methods/results
• Methods insufficient for reproducibility or credibility
• Conclusions not supported by data (over-claiming)
• Poor language/structure that prevents review
• Out of scope for the journal
• Clear scientific flaws

Stop Conditions

Stop and ask the user if:

• The target journal is unknown — "suitability" (criterion 3) cannot be judged without it.
• The user wants a judgement on novelty or scientific validity in a domain you cannot verify — flag the limit rather than guessing.
• A reviewer comment is ambiguous — do not assume the category; ask the user what the referee most likely meant.
• The user asks you to defend something that the data do not support — propose a hedged reformulation instead.

Coordination with Other Skills

• academic-writing — invoke when the review surfaces sections that need re-drafting. This skill identifies the problem; the writing skill produces the fix.
• doc-coauthoring — invoke when the response involves tracked changes across co-authors.

Use When

Use this skill whenever the task is to judge, review, or defend a manuscript — running a pre-review checklist, predicting referee objections, categorising reviewer comments, writing a response letter, or deciding what to do after a rejection. For drafting or rewriting sections, use academic-writing instead.