One of the professional community service responsibilities of a scientist is to review articles submitted for publication. There aren't any formal classes on the process. Most of us learned to do it by seeing it done by more experienced reviewers.
A recent Google search turned up this article.
I thought it offered a good perspective on the process and summarized into 10 rules.
I suppose their Rule 4: As a Reviewer You Are Part of the Authoring Process has been my main guiding principle.
When someone in our research group writes a paper and circulates it for comments, our task is to look for gaps in the data, unclear explanations to be cleaned up and over-reach/flaws in the conclusions. The goal is improving the paper. And so, as a reviewer, I try to have that mindset.
I also found Rule 3: Write Reviews You Would Be Satisfied with as an Author to be crucial in finding the right tone of voice. Being at the receiving end of sarcastic reviews or reviews that make you wonder if they read the paper is very frustrating. Even though the vast majority of journals use blinded reviews, I think a good attitude to take is to write the review as if the authors of the submission would find out who you are.
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