Should I become a reviewer for Math Reviews after leaving academia?

I'm a reviewer for Mathematical Reviews (now best known by its association with MathSciNet). My experience has been:

  • I usually spend about 1-2 hours to read a paper and write the review.

    I don't necessarily look to completely digest all the details of the paper, but I at least try to understand what the results are, why they are interesting, how they relate to previous work, and a general idea of the proof techniques.

    Note that, unlike the pre-publication peer review process, you're not expected to check the correctness of the proof, nor to make a judgment on the paper's novelty or significance.

  • They want you to submit your review within about 6 weeks of being invited.

  • You can set your "queue size", i.e. the maximum number of papers you want to have at any one time, to whatever you want. When you submit a review, you can expect to receive another invitation within a few days.

  • You can always decline a review invitation if you are temporarily too busy, or if the paper doesn't interest you or fit your expertise, and they will just send it to someone else.

  • You can specify your areas of interest (by MSC code) and they send you papers that appear to match your interests. If your interests shift, or if you start getting a lot of papers that mystify you, you can make changes.

  • It's a very minor CV item even within academia, and probably even less outside.

  • You do get a little bit of extra visibility, since reviews are posted with your name, and seen by anyone who looks up the paper on MathSciNet.

  • You do get paid, sort of. You receive 12 AMS Points for each review you submit. Each AMS Point is worth $1 (USD) in credit toward purchases from the AMS (books, journal subscriptions, membership fees, etc). So it maybe adds up to a couple of free books per year.

  • Also, if you review a book for them, you get to keep it.


  1. One paper per month seems like a high load, but I'm not as connected to the journal reviewing scene as I once was.
  2. I don't think much of anyone outside of academia, national laboratories (NASA, Dept. of Energy, etc), and some commerical R&D labs (Microsoft, IBM, etc.) will care if you are a reviewer.
  3. And, yes, reviewing is typically done for no pay. Though, I would say that at least for active academics, you "pay" for reviews on your own submissions by doing reviews on others.