Developing reviewer competence across the career span

Writing high-quality reviews is a professional skill.As with any skill, strong performance depends not only on underlying ability but also how that ability is applied during learning experiences to develop skills over time (Ackerman, 2023).Yet, as the focal article highlights (Allen et al., 2026), reviewer learning experiences currently seem to range from inconsistent to nonexistent.The lack of consistent reviewer development experiences belies a flawed underlying assumption that strong research abilities will translate into skilled reviewing.Through the lens of the science of workplace learning, we can reimagine reviewers' skill acquisition and development as an ongoing learning process worthy of our field's attention.Specifically, we believe that it is important to focus on two distinct stages of reviewer skill acquisition.First, it is essential to target learning experiences during the initial ramp up of skill acquisition-the transition from a novice who has potentially never read a review to becoming a reviewer oneself.Second, we must consider how our field can facilitate continual skill refinement and development throughout one's career as a reviewer.In this commentary, we leverage the literature on workplace learning to outline considerations for each stage of reviewer skill development and highlight practical suggestions to facilitate more effective reviewer skill learning.By training reviewers more intentionally, we believe the field could reap the positive changes Allen et al. ( 2026) envision: reviews more consistently focused on improving our science.Starting from scratch: Scaffolding reviewer learning from the ground up In the focal article, Allen et al. assert that "we have an obligation as a community of scholars to develop and train those who are inexperienced to become high quality reviewers, but given the career stakes for those submitting the work for journal peer review, we encourage additional means of training" (p.15).We agree and underscore the point that the stakes are too high to hope for reviewer skill development without building the infrastructure to facilitate and ensure it.Because most reviewers in our field likely hold a graduate degree in I-O psychology or a related field, graduate school is a natural place to incorporate intentional, scaffolded skill learning.Although doctoral students are not the primary target for top journal reviewer assignments, they are sometimes invited to review outright or through journal programs that provide structured review training (e.g., Academy of Management Review Bridge Reviewer Program).Similarly,