Marking a journal paper as “Minor revisions needed” for minor typos?

Unless you are reviewing for a truly lazy editor, it shouldn't matter. No matter which selection you make, the editor will see from your report that you are asking for extremely minor revisions and act accordingly.

Generally, I recommend minor revisions in such a case, because authors might not be given the chance to correct typos in a straight acceptance, and they might appreciate a second chance to do what they should have before submitting (but almost no one does), which is to find more typos and correct them. For every one that you found, they will probably find another one.

Most journals provide copyediting service to correct spelling. If this journal will copyedit accepted papers, then I would recommend the editor accept the paper. If the journal does not provide copyediting service and requires the authors to provide a "camera ready" version before acceptance, I would recommend "minor revisions" to the editor.

You should recommend to accept the paper. As a reviewer you are asked to judge upon the scientific content of a paper. As long as the typos do not change the paper's meaning or render it ununderstandable, it's the journal's responsibility to deal with them. The format of the printed final version is likely to change anyways, so you couldn't even forsee if those formating issues would still be present.

You can easily write in the report that the list of typos/grammar mistakes and the formatting need to be corrected for before publication in order to make your opinion clear on that point. It will then be the editor's decision on whether to send the paper back to the authors or to rely on the journal's copyediting service.

Minor revisions are meant to be chosen in case the paper in general can be recommended for publication, but there are some flaws that need to be revised. Examples could be

• missing factors in a formula, which once inserted do not contradict the statements made,
• left-out definitions,
• unsufficient explanations of a generally sound method
• too strong or too weak statements, which could easily be corrected etc.