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TRBAM Editorial Manager  |   Annual Meeting Homepage

Quick Guide For TRB Annual Meeting Reviewers

Reviews occur between August - September.

Basic Expectations:

  • Review submissions within your area of expertise and return your comments by September 15
  • Respect the confidentiality of the process
  • Be objective, professional, and constructive in your review
  • Declare any conflicts of interest (professional, personal or financial) and recuse yourself from the review
  • If you are a new reviewer, please read our registration instructions.
  • Add editorialmanager.com to your safe sender list to help ensure you receive our emails. If your organization uses IP-based filtering, allow the IP range 216.205.0.64/26.
  • Please mark yourself as unavailable in the system if you will be on vacation/away and unable to participate with reviews.  You can do this in your profile.

New! Personal Classifications:

Please review your Editorial Manager profile by July 31, 2026, updating your expertise classifications and confirming that your job title, organization, and email address are current. Editorial Manager is a separate system from MyTRB. If you do not already have an Editorial Manager profile, please create one.

The classifications were revised to better reflect current transportation research and practice, reduce duplication, and improve reviewer matching. Your existing classifications have been carried over, but any that were removed from the system will no longer appear in your profile.

What’s New

Reviewers will now be matched to papers based on both topic and method expertise.

  • Topic: Select the transportation subject areas where you have expertise.
  • Method: Select methodological classifications only if you have expertise in those methods and are comfortable evaluating them in peer review.

Your classifications help TRB build balanced review teams that can assess both a paper’s subject matter and its methodology.

Log into Editorial Manager and update your profile using these instructions: Updating Classifications. Thank you for your continued service to the TRB Annual Meeting paper review process.

Starting a Review:

  • Read the Abstract and accept or reject invitation to review as soon as possible (Note: you must respond to the invitation within seven days or you will be unassigned.)
  • Review the reviewer form questions below to familiarize yourself with the information TRB is looking for.
  • Read the paper and form an initial impression before you begin your review.
  • If the paper is unintelligible, please return it to the paper review coordinator with a recommendation to desk reject
  • If a good paper is compromised by poor writing, tactfully note this in your comments and suggest a grammar review; do not provide individual corrections unless they relate to the content
  • Identify specific strengths and weaknesses of the paper in your summary
  • Provide detailed and constructive comments to help with revisions in the text box titled "Reviewer Comments to Authors"
  • Provide an assessment of the paper in the text box titled "Reviewer Confidential Comments to Editor"
  • Do not communicate with the authors directly as this is a blind review process
  • If appropriate, suggest additional relevant literature for the author to consider 

New! Reviewer Form Questions:

The reviewer forms have been updated.  You will be asked to evaluate each paper by the following questions, using a 1-10 scale with 10 being the highest and 1 the lowest.

  • Evaluate the clarity and readability of the paper.  How well can reviewers understand the work as presented.
  • How well does the paper meet stated objectives?
  • Are the methods sound and replicable?
  • Is there a clear connection between the dataset and the research objective?
  • How well are the findings supported by the research?
  • Does the paper have practical applications?
  • Does the paper demonstrate novelty?
  • Is existing work well described and referenced?
  • How strongly would you recommend this for presentation at the annual meeting?
  • How strongly would you recommend this paper for publication consideration by the Editorial Board?

There are several Yes/No/Text questions as well:

  • Do you have any conflicts of interest to declare?
  • Do you have any ethical concerns?
  • Were any AI tools utilitize for this review, including editing or grammar-checking?

For papers submitted for Presentation and Publication, you will also be asked these additional questions:

  • If this paper is recommended to the TRR Editorial Board for publication review, can TRB share your name and email with the Board for re-review purposes?
  • If so, do you consent for TRB to share your review comments with the TRR Editorial Board?

Usage of Large Language Models/Generative AI:

  • It is unethical for a reviewer to use LLMs to create a critical summary that looks like a review. Reviewers should not feed the authors' confidential information into any AI tool due to the authors' intellectual property and data privacy concerns. Reviewers also must declare that all technical assessment is derived from their own expert opinion. 
  • If you are considering using a large language model [(LLM), e.g. ChatGPT] or Generative AI to help prepare your review for the TRR or TRBAM, you must comply with the following statement based on general guidance from COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics):
    Reviewers who use AI as a tool to assist in their evaluation of a submission must be transparent in disclosing how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Reviewers are fully responsible for the content of their review comments, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics. In order to receive credit for peer review, the assessment must be your own and not the output of Artificial Intelligence/Learned Language Model/AI Chat Bot, or other modules.

  • Specifically, Reviewers are required to:
    • Clearly indicate the use of language models in the reviewer questionnaire, including which model was used and for what purpose. 
    • Verify the accuracy, validity, and appropriateness of any AI content or citations generated by language models and correct any errors or inconsistencies.
    • Provide a list of sources used to generate review comments, including those generated by language models.
    • Be conscious of the potential for plagiarism in your review where the LLM may have reproduced substantial text from other sources. 
    • Acknowledge the limitations of language models in your review comments, including the potential for bias, errors, and gaps in knowledge.

What to Expect:

  • You will receive an invitation with the paper's abstract from TRB Annual Meeting Review.
  • Please accept or decline the review invitation within 7 days.
  • Your review of the full paper is due by September 15.
  • The decision options are Accept or Reject for presentation at the TRB Annual Meeting.
  • If your review is not submitted by September 15th, a decision may be made without your input.
  • You will be copied on the decision letter when your comments are sent to the author.