REVIEWER GUIDELINES

Thank you for contributing to the scientific community by agreeing to review. Peer review is the cornerstone of academic publishing; it ensures the validity, quality, and originality of published work. These guidelines are designed to help you perform an effective, fair, and ethical review.

Before You Accept: Ethical Responsibilities

Before accepting an invitation to review, please consider the following COPE-compliant requirements:

  • Conflict of Interest: Do not review if you have a competing interest with the authors, their institution, or the funding sources. This includes:
    • Recent collaboration (within the last 3 years).
    • Personal relationships (friendship or animosity).
    • Direct financial competition.
    • If in doubt, disclose this to the Editor immediately.
  • Competence: Only accept the invitation if the manuscript falls within your area of expertise. It is acceptable to state that you can only assess specific aspects of the paper (e.g., statistical analysis) while lacking expertise in others.
  • Timeliness: Only accept if you can return the review within the specified deadline. If you anticipate a delay, notify the Editor immediately.
  • Confidentiality: The manuscript is a confidential document. Do not share it, discuss it with colleagues, or use the data before publication.

What to Review: Evaluation Criteria

Please assess the manuscript based on the following scientific and structural pillars.

  1. Originality and Significance
  • Does the study address a significant problem?
  • Is the research gap clearly identified?
  • Does the paper contribute new knowledge to the field?
  1. Title and Abstract
  • Title: Is it concise and informative? Does it reflect the content?
  • Abstract: Is it self-contained? Does it accurately summarize the background, methods, results, and conclusion?
  1. Introduction
  • Is the background literature relevant and up-to-date?
  • Is the research question or hypothesis clearly stated?
  1. Methodology (Crucial)
  • Reproducibility: Is the method described in enough detail for another researcher to replicate the study?
  • Design: Is the study design appropriate for the research question?
  • Sampling: Are the sampling methods and criteria for inclusion/exclusion clear?
  • Statistics: Are the statistical tests appropriate? If you are uncomfortable assessing the statistics, please notify the editor.
  1. Results
  • Are the findings presented clearly and logically?
  • Do the figures and tables accurately represent the data?
  • Are there any duplications between the text and the tables?
  1. Discussion and Conclusion
  • Are the conclusions supported by the data presented? (Avoid overreaching claims).
  • Does the author discuss the limitations of the study?
  • Are the results compared effectively with previous studies?
  1. References
  • Are the citations accurate and current?
  • Does the author omit key citations to promote their own work or the journal’s (citation manipulation)?

Ethical Issues

As a reviewer, please alert the Editor confidentially if you suspect:

  • Plagiarism: Significant similarity to other published works.
  • Image Manipulation: Signs that images or blots have been sliced, duplicated, or enhanced unethically.
  • Ethical Approval: Lack of statement regarding IRB/Ethics Committee approval for human or animal research.
  • Dual Submission: Suspicion that the paper is currently under review elsewhere.
  • Salami Slicing: Assessing a paper that seems to be a tiny fragment of a larger study merely to increase publication count.

Structuring Your Review Report

Your review should be constructive and courteous. Avoid hostile or personal comments. Use the following structure:

  1. Confidential Comments to the Editor
  • State your final recommendation clearly.
  • Mention any ethical concerns or conflicts of interest here.
  • Highlight specific strengths or fatal flaws not intended for the author's eyes.
  1. Comments to the Authors
  • Summary: Start with a 2-3 sentence summary of what you understood the paper to be about. This shows the author you read it carefully.
  • General Assessment: Provide an overview of the paper’s strengths and weaknesses.
  • Major Comments: List critical issues that must be addressed before publication (e.g., flaws in methodology, missing data, major structural problems).
  • Minor Comments: List smaller issues (e.g., ambiguous sentences, labeling errors in figures, typos).

Note: Do not focus solely on grammar/spelling. If the language is poor, simply recommend that the manuscript be proofread by a native speaker or professional service.

Final Recommendation Categories

You will generally be asked to choose one of the following:

  1. Accept: The paper is suitable for publication as is (rare).
  2. Minor Revisions: The paper requires small corrections or clarifications.
  3. Major Revisions: The paper has significant flaws (methodological or structural) but has potential. It requires re-review.
  4. Reject: The paper is scientifically flawed, lacks originality, or is outside the scope of the journal.

Policy on the Use of Generative AI (AI-Assisted Review)

In alignment with COPE’s position on Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, reviewers must adhere to the following strict guidelines regarding the use of Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) during the peer review process:

  1. Confidentiality and Data Privacy
  • Do Not Upload Manuscripts: Reviewers strictly must not upload the manuscript, abstract, figures, or any part of the submission into a public Generative AI tool. Uploading unpublished work into these systems violates the author’s confidentiality and proprietary rights, as the data may be used to train the AI model.
  • Breach of Trust: Treating the manuscript as public data (by sharing it with an AI) is considered a serious breach of publication ethics.
  1. Accountability and Accuracy
  • Full Responsibility: The reviewer accepts full responsibility for the content of their review report.
  • Risk of Hallucination: AI tools are known to generate "hallucinations" (fabricating citations or facts) and may produce biased assessments. Reviewers must not rely on AI to interpret the scientific accuracy of the paper.
  • Critical Thinking: The core function of peer review is human critical evaluation. This cannot be delegated to an algorithm.
  1. Declaration of Use
    • transparency: If a reviewer uses AI tools to facilitate the review process (e.g., for checking the grammar of their own review report or translating specific concepts), this must be declared transparently to the Editor.
  • Example Declaration: "I used [Name of Tool] to assist in refining the grammatical structure of my review comments. I certify that no part of the author's manuscript was uploaded to the tool."

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

These guidelines are adapted from the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers (Version 2, 2017) and incorporate best practices from leading international journals. We thank COPE for their foundational work in establishing ethical standards for scholarly publishing.