The reviewer is responsible for critically examining and evaluating a manuscript in their specialty field, and then providing respectful, constructive, and honest feedback to authors about their submission. It is appropriate for the reviewer to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the article, ways to improve the strength and quality of the work, and evaluate the relevance and originality of the manuscript.
The identity of the reviewers should never be revealed to the authors at any time either during the process of review or after article publication too.
Reviewers should be honest and reviewers should not be influenced by the origin of the manuscript, religious, political or cultural view point of the author, gender, race and ethnicity of the author. The peer review comments provided by reviewers must be transparent, unbiased and should not involve any personal or professional conflicts.
In evaluating a manuscript, reviewers should focus on the following:
The comments given by the reviewer must be relevant and support to increase the quality of the manuscript.
Reviewers must submit the review within the timelines provided.
Try to keep in mind the following questions - they'll help you form your overall impression:
If you find a major flaws in the article, note your reasoning and clear supporting evidence.
Even if you are coming to the opinion that an article has serious flaws in the first read, make sure you read the whole paper. This is very important because you may find some really positive aspects that can be communicated to the author. This could help them with future submissions.
A full read-through will also make sure that any initial concerns are indeed correct and fair. After all, you need the context of the whole paper before deciding to reject. If you still intend to recommend rejection give constructive feedback describing ways that they could improve the research. This helps developing researchers improve their work and explains to the editor why you felt the manuscript should not be published.
When reviewing the next stage, reviewer should keep the following in mind:
Results is, where the author/s should explain in words what they discovered in the research. It should be clearly laid out and in a logical structure. You will need to consider if the appropriate analysis has been conducted. Are the statistics correct? If you are not comfortable with statistics, please advise the editor when you submit your report. Interpretation of results should not be included in this section.
Tables, Figures, Images: Are they appropriate? Do they properly show the data? Are they easy to interpret and understand?
Discussion should always, at some point, gather all the information together into a single. Authors should describe and discuss the overall article formed. If there are gaps or inconsistencies in the section, they should address these and suggest ways future research might confirm the findings or take the research forward.
The conclusion section is usually not more than a few paragraphs and may be presented in a separate section. The conclusions should reflect upon the aims - whether they were achieved or not - and, just like the aims, should not be surprising. If the conclusions are not evidence-based, it's appropriate to ask for them to be re-written.
You will need to check referencing for accuracy, adequacy and balance.
Reviewer's recommendation should support one of the below-mentioned acts:
Recommendation should be backed with constructive arguments and facts based on the content of the manuscript.
Reviewers are requested not to use any information of the assigned data.
Please mention the proper reasons to reject the article like what are the weak points and the areas to be improved further.
Any kind of conflicts can be resolved at editorial office.
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