Referee Report Workflow
The Referee Report workflow is built for academic researchers who want rigorous, structured feedback on a manuscript before it reaches a seminar audience, an advisor, a coauthor meeting, or a journal referee.
It is not a generic paper summary. It is a manuscript-review process that asks the kinds of questions a careful referee would ask: What is the contribution? Is the mechanism clear? Is the empirical design persuasive? Are the data and tables doing enough work? Where would a skeptical reader push back?
Use it when you want Corbis to read a paper as a research object, not as an isolated document.
What the workflow does
Upload a manuscript PDF and Corbis launches a durable background run. The workflow parses the paper, identifies the core claims, and runs parallel specialist passes before synthesizing the findings into a referee-style report.
The output is designed to help you see the paper from the outside:
- how the contribution is likely to be understood
- whether the mechanism is sufficiently developed
- where the methods or identification strategy may be vulnerable
- whether the data and measurement choices support the claims
- whether the reported results are coherent, complete, and persuasive
- which issues should anchor a revision plan
The finished report can be exported and reopened later from Previous Reviews.
Specialist agents
The workflow is organized around specialist review agents. Each one reads the paper through a different scholarly lens:
- Contribution agent: evaluates novelty, positioning, relationship to nearby literature, and whether the paper makes a clearly stated contribution.
- Mechanism agent: examines the theory, causal story, economic intuition, and whether the results actually support the proposed channel.
- Methods agent: reviews the empirical design, assumptions, identification logic, estimation choices, and robustness needs.
- Data agent: checks measurement, sample construction, variable definitions, data limitations, and possible threats from selection or coverage.
- Results agent: evaluates tables, figures, magnitudes, interpretation, external validity, and whether conclusions exceed the evidence.
Those passes are not presented as five separate essays. Corbis synthesizes them into one coherent referee-style assessment so the output reads like a usable review rather than a pile of model notes.
What happens after upload
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Manuscript intake
Corbis extracts the manuscript text and prepares the paper for review. The upload screen lets you add optional focus notes, such as "pay special attention to the identification strategy" or "focus on whether the mechanism is supported by the results."
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Parallel review passes
The specialist agents run in parallel across the major review dimensions. This keeps the review broad enough to catch contribution, mechanism, methods, data, and results issues without forcing every concern through one generic prompt.
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Verification and synthesis
Corbis checks the review passes for contradictions, ranks concerns by importance, and synthesizes them into an exportable referee report.
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Report and exports
The final output is saved with the run and can be reopened from the workflow page. Where export actions are available, the report can be downloaded for revision planning, coauthor discussion, or records.
What the report is good for
The Referee Report workflow is strongest when you need an early external read on a manuscript's scholarly argument.
It is useful for:
- pre-submission review before sending a paper to a journal
- preparing for seminars, workshops, and conference presentations
- helping coauthors converge on the highest-priority revision issues
- identifying where the paper's contribution is undersold or overclaimed
- stress-testing identification and mechanism language
- turning scattered concerns into an ordered revision agenda
The goal is not to make the paper more generic. The goal is to expose the likely referee questions while the author still has time to improve the manuscript.
What the report is not
The workflow does not replace a real journal referee, an advisor, or a domain expert.
It also is not a promise that:
- every relevant literature comparison has been found
- every statistical issue has been proved correct or incorrect
- every claim in the manuscript is externally verified
- a favorable report predicts acceptance
For highly technical consistency checks, use Technical Audit. For broad source-backed research, use chat or Projects. For the overall workflow catalog, see Guide to Structured Workflows.
How to get better results
Provide a clean manuscript PDF with selectable text. If there is a specific concern, use the focus field in the upload card.
Good focus notes include:
- "Focus on whether the parallel-trends evidence is convincing."
- "Pay attention to variable construction and whether the tables support the headline claim."
- "Evaluate whether the mechanism is distinguishable from alternative explanations."
- "Treat this as a finance/economics paper and be strict about identification."
Short, targeted instructions help the workflow allocate attention without turning the review into a narrow checklist.
When to choose this workflow
Choose Referee Report when the central question is:
Would a careful academic reviewer find this manuscript convincing, important, and publishable after revision?
Choose Technical Audit when the central question is:
Are the equations, statistics, tables, notation, and references internally correct before submission?
Many researchers use both: first Technical Audit to remove preventable technical defects, then Referee Report to evaluate the paper's broader scholarly case.