Summary: Excellent guides on academic writing and presentation in science in general, and in mathematics and computer science in particular, do abound (see, for example, Refs. , while guides on the assessment of the results of academic writing are rather more scarce. This short article presents two itemized lists that may be helping hands during the assessment of a scientific article in the field of mathematical optimization and operations research – be it your own, a work by a Master or PhD student of yours, or even a manuscript that you are refereeing for a scientific journal or conference proceedings volume. The first list – “Subbens checklist” – describes necessary ingredients of a complete article. The second list provides criteria for assessing the quality and scientific value of an article.