What counts as judging
The criterion at 8 CFR 204.5(h)(3)(iv) concerns participation, individually or on a panel, as a judge of the work of others in the same or an allied field. Peer review for a journal is the obvious case. So is serving on a conference programme committee, reviewing grant applications, examining doctoral theses, or sitting on an awards panel.
What matters is that you evaluated other specialists' work in a role that presupposes standing in the field. Reviewing a colleague's draft as a favour does not count; being invited by an editor to assess a submission does.
Unlike original contributions, this criterion is discrete and verifiable. Either you were invited and completed reviews, or you were not. That makes it one of the more tractable of the ten.
A single review is thin. A sustained record across multiple venues, evidenced contemporaneously, is what makes this criterion carry weight.
Documentation is where this falls apart
The usual failure is not a lack of reviewing — it is a lack of proof. Review invitations arrive by email, get actioned, and the thread is deleted or buried. Two years later the reviews exist but the evidence does not.
What supports the criterion well: the invitation email naming the journal and the manuscript, confirmation that the review was completed, any editor acknowledgement, and where the platform supports it a verified reviewer record. Some journals will issue a confirmation letter on request, and most will do so more readily for a recent review than an old one.
Keep a running log from today. Journal, date, manuscript identifier, and the invitation email archived somewhere you will still have access to after you change institutions. This takes a minute per review and is close to impossible to reconstruct.
How reviewers actually get invited
Editors find reviewers through the literature. If you have published in a journal, you are in its reviewer pool. If your work is cited in a submission, the handling editor may well come to you. Visibility in the field and review invitations are the same phenomenon viewed from two sides.
You can also make yourself findable: keeping reviewer profiles current on the platforms your target journals use, and telling editors you have worked with that you are available in your specific area. A short, specific offer to an editor who knows your work is not presumptuous — journals are chronically short of qualified reviewers.
What does not work is paying for reviewer credentials or accepting invitations from journals with no genuine review process. Those appear in the same checks that surface predatory publications, and they undermine the criterion they were meant to satisfy.