List of Possible Reviewers

Suggesting Candidate Reviewers

Preparing for internal and external review can make us feel vulnerable. Remember, though, we frequently offer our research for review when we submit a paper to a peer-reviewed journal or a proposal for research funding. Suggesting names for possible reviewers, as many role-and-scope documents require, seems to raise the emotional stakes by putting us closer to the process, even if we ultimately never know who actually writes those letters.

If your academic unit requires internal peer review of your teaching, service, and research, you may have clear ideas about whom to include on your list. If you have had a falling out with another faculty member, naturally, do not include that person. On the other hand, perhaps you have served on committees and co-taught with an individual, so that person clearly has insight into your performance—yet you may not want to include that person on your list, either. Because the review committee is limited in the number of people it can draw from your list, if someone is an obvious choice, you may want to omit that person from your list, trusting that the review committee will indeed invite that person to prepare an internal review.

Usually, tenure and promotion candidates undergo external review for their research and sometimes also for their teaching. I encourage you to draw on conference contacts, those friendly, smart acquaintances you enjoyed talking with because of some shared affinity, whether in methods, research domain, teaching topic, or personal history. Do enough background-checking to ensure that those whom you recommend as external reviewers are tenured at “peer” institutions, those requiring comparable faculty performance, serving similar populations, or holding charters analogous to your institution.

The academy thrives on peer review. Trust that this process, too, will work for you.