Guidelines for Reviewers

The reviewer report allows you to offer constructive assistance and criticism to the author(s). Please be sensitive to the author(s) and convey your feedback in a positive way. Your comments should include a brief summary of what you think the author is trying to accomplish, a discussion of any flaws you feel the paper may contain, and detailed directions for recommended changes. The best reviewer reports are done in collaboration between senior (more experienced) and junior (closer to the textbooks’ intended readership) reviewers. Students in your classes also make great (supplement) reviewers - this is our intended audience.

A. Define the Audience. The starting point of any writing project is deciding on the audience. For your report, there are really three audience members: (a) the editorial team; (b) theauthor(s); and (c) yourself, as an expert and a representative of the actuarial community.

B. Read the Chapter. Start by reading the chapter quickly so as to get the key ideas. As you go, jot down a few notes about what the author(s) are doing. Then, think for a while aboutthe big picture -- what are the authors trying to do, whether they are taking the best approach, and how successful are they at their approach. Then, jot down some further notes aboutthe paper and highlight any major concerns that you had on this first reading.

Then, read the chapter carefully, as if it were one written by a colleague or student. As you go through the chapter, you should make notes on the following, perhaps in the margins of thechapter itself, about:

• • The key substantive ideas that the author is seeking to convey to the reader: (a) the topics that are being studied, (b) the tools used; (c) the logical arguments made; (d) theconclusions reached; and (e) whether the chapter learning objectives are demonstrated.

  • Central problem areas in the chapter. These include places where (a) the description of the topics is inappropriate to the actual material in the paper; (b) the modeling tools are being used inappropriately; (c) there is only a loose link between the model and the empirics; (d) the conclusions are incorrectly made or expressed; and (e) the contribution to theliterature is inaccurately described.

  • Smaller difficulties with the chapter. These include (a) areas where the author's line of thought is hard to follow; (b) spots with spelling and grammatical problems; (c) missing datasources and poorly constructed tables or figures; (d) references to the literature that are missing or incorrect.

C. Provide Feedback to the Author: It is important that the author(s) benefit from the hard work that you have put into reviewing the chapter. Depending on the nature and status of thechapter, this feedback might include:

• • Comments on areas where the logical argument in the chapter was hard to follow, important mathematical derivations were obscure, or empirical work was incompletely described.

  • Comments on areas where the exposition was weak.

  • Reports on small problems organized by page.

D. Learning Outcomes

We went through a pretty detailed process in identifying learning outcomes, see our Content Mapping.

However, professional exams change. It would be really helpful if, when looking over this material, you check to see whether we are covering material likely to be of interest to students studying for professional exams.

E. Way to Review

Everything is open source and available on the web. In principle, one could make suggestions directly on GitHub. However, in the earlier round of reviewing we found that making comments about the pdf version to be most effective. So,

• • download the pdf version of the book.

Then, either make comments directly in the file (using, for example, Adobe Acrobat) or use a text editor such as Notepad, identify the page and line and describe your suggested improvement.

Then, send your suggestions to Paul Herbert Johnson <paul.johnson@wisc.edu>, Jed Frees <jfrees@bus.wisc.edu>, or directly to the chapter author(s), with a copy to Paul and/or Jed.