Who is The Friendly Reviewer?
I can’t say that I dreamed of being an academic when I was a kid - I don’t think I would have even known what an academic was - but I did fall in love with research during my undergraduate Psychology degree. Exploring new ideas and searching for patterns in the data were wonderful new accompaniments to my previous ambition of being a teacher. I got my PhD in 2001 and was lucky enough to get a few good papers during that period. Unfortunately, the reality hit home when I started my first “proper” academic job and got mired in the usual administrative/teaching vortex and the papers dried up. Over the years, I lost confidence. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t cut out to be an academic - I couldn’t even get an R&R decision! I was all set to quit the job and open a bookstore when we had to move because of my husband’s job. I came back from maternity leave to a new job in a new city and I promised myself that, this time, I would crack the publication puzzle.
Luckily, my new job also came with new chances to talk with, and pick the brains of, many experienced academics from around the world. Living outside the hubs of North America and Europe means that it can be difficult to access the implicit knowledge that smoothes the path to success. I talked with anybody I could and stored every nugget of wisdom, every throw-away line, every seminar or discussion on how to be productive/successful/published. Slowly, it started coming together and I started to see it working in my own writing and publication record.
Alongside this growing knowledge of “how to” write was my increasing expertise in helping others to develop their own writing. I joined the Editorial Board of Journal of Organizational Behavior early in my career and became an Associate Editor soon after that. I loved, and still love, reviewing papers, and trying to find ways of helping a contribution shine through in a manuscript became one of my passions. I started supervising doctoral students and working with them to take their fledgling research-babies through to adulthood. Over the years I joined other Editorial Boards, including Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Journal of Applied Psychology. When I stepped down as Associate Editor from Journal of Organizational Behavior (after almost 10 years!), I had only a year off before the bug hit me again and I agreed to join the Human Relations team as an Associate Editor.
And then Life stepped in and had something to say. After contracting a virus in September 2018, I got ME/CFS. I went from being Head of a Management Department of over 80 staff and a vast (but tight) budget who also managed a research program, supervised several doctoral students and taught Masters-level research methods, to being bed-ridden. I could no longer attend meetings, make difficult decisions, concentrate or teach. It took me a few years of relinquishing tasks gradually and making my job smaller and smaller before I realised that actually I couldn’t continue as an academic any longer.
So I decided to focus on what I loved: helping other people to get their work published. I had always had a lot of people ask me to do friendly reviews for them and I realised that not everybody has the opportunity to ask a colleague for that help. Some people don't have access to experienced colleagues in their field, while others have colleagues who are too busy to provide the necessary time and effort required for a good friendly review. And then there's the fact that you have to ask: I know that I had often been too shy to ask for that help, even if I had colleagues who might have said ‘yes’ if I had asked them.
I also realised that a key turning point for me was when I was able to learn the “tricks of the trade” for publishing; but it’s hard to find this information unless you have regular informal access to people who publish in the top journals. More information is now becoming available via editorials, seminars and sessions at the major conferences but, again, you need to be in the right place at the right time.
I wanted to make these learning and feedback opportunities open to anybody, regardless of which university they work at or where they live. And so, The Friendly Reviewer was born.
Although I can only work part-time, I'm still Chair (Professor) of Organisational Behaviour at Leeds University Business School. I still work with doctoral students and I still sit on Editorial Boards and regularly review for the journals in our field. In my many years as a supervisor and reviewer, I have developed a style that not only highlights potential weaknesses in research but also identifies solutions to those problems. In recognition of this, in 2023 I was awarded both a Supervision Award Leeds University Business School and the Editorial Board Reviewer of the Year for Journal of Applied Psychology.
I'd love to work with you to help you get your research published. If you're not certain whether it's a good fit or not, please do get in touch and we can see if there's enough overlap or not. If you're not certain whether your draft is ready or not, please get in touch and we can plan when the best time would be. If you're not sure whether you want to do the workshops or not but you're intrigued, let me know and I'll see what we can do. In short, get in touch and I'll try and help whatever way I can!