Understanding the ‘Five Stages of Peer Review’: How can I easily and effectively write a peer review report for a journal?

Getting emails from journals asking you to perform peer review can be confusing, flattering, or downright scary. How to manage this?

Journal editors routinely send out email ‘requests for peer review’. I got one this morning: ‘Dear x, We would be grateful if you would kindly agree to act as a reviewer for this paper.  The abstract appears at the end of this letter, along with the names of the authors’. Perhaps you’ve recently been the lucky recipient of a similar email? Bear in mind …