Reviewer Guidelines

Research and Education Promotion Association (REPA) follows the Council of Science Editors (CSE) guidance to encourage reviewers to comply with the salient academic contributions set forth herein. Peer review is the principal mechanism by which the quality of research is judged. Most funding decisions in science and the academic advancement of scientists are based on peer-reviewed publications. Because the number of scientific articles published each year continues to grow, the quality of the peer-review process and the quality of the editorial board are cited as primary influences on a journal’s reputation, impact factor, and standing in the field.

Scientific journals publishing peer-reviewed articles depend heavily on scientific referees or reviewers who typically volunteer their time and expertise. In most circumstances, at least two reviewers are solicited to evaluate a manuscript; some journals request three reviews. This may be required in situations where review by a statistician is needed. In cases of controversy or strong disagreement regarding the merits of the work, an additional review may be solicited, or one of the journal’s editors might give an evaluation. More than three reviewers are sometimes used if reviewers from several fields are needed to obtain a thorough evaluation of a paper. In addition to fairness in judgment and expertise in the field, peer reviewers have significant responsibilities toward authors, editors, and readers.

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• Providing written, unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the work, together with the documented basis for the reviewer’s opinion.
• Indicating whether the writing is clear, concise, and relevant and rating the work’s composition, scientific accuracy, originality, and interest to the journal’s readers.
• Avoiding personal comments or criticism.
• Maintaining the confidentiality of the review process: not sharing, discussing with third parties, or disclosing information from the reviewed paper.

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• Notifying the editor immediately if unable to review in a timely manner and providing the names of potential other reviewers.
• Alerting the editor about any potential personal or financial conflict of interest and declining to review when a possibility of a conflict exists.
• Complying with the editor’s written instructions on the journal’s expectations for the scope, content, and quality of the review.
• Providing a thoughtful, fair, constructive, and informative critique of the submitted work, which may include supplementary material provided to the journal by the author.
• Determining scientific merit, originality, and scope of the work; indicating ways to improve it; and recommending acceptance or rejection using whatever rating scale the editor deems most useful.
• Noting any ethical concerns, such as any violation of accepted norms of ethical treatment of animal or human subjects or substantial similarity between the reviewed manuscript and any published paper or any manuscript concurrently submitted to another journal which may be known to the reviewer.
• Refraining from direct author contact.

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• Ensuring that the methods are adequately detailed to allow the reader to judge the scientific merit of the study design and be able to replicate the study, if desired.
• Ensuring that the article cites all relevant work by other scientists.

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Editors, frequently with the assistance of electronic databases of reviewers kept by their journal’s offices, choose reviewers whose expertise most closely matches the manuscript’s topic and invite them to review the paper. The editors also consider the number of manuscripts sent to a reviewer so as not to overburden any one expert. Some journals encourage authors to suggest preferred reviewers and reviewers they would prefer to be excluded.

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Material under review should not be shared or discussed with anyone outside the review process unless necessary and approved by the editor. Material submitted for peer review is a privileged communication that should be treated in confidence, taking care to guard the author’s identity and work. Reviewers should not retain copies of submitted manuscripts and should not use the knowledge of their content for any purpose unrelated to the peer review process.

Reviewer comments should acknowledge positive aspects of the material under review, identify negative aspects constructively, and indicate the improvements needed. Anything less leaves the author with no insight into the deficiencies in the submitted work. A reviewer should explain and support his or her judgment clearly enough that editors and authors can understand the basis of the comments. A reviewer should respect the intellectual independence of the author.

Reviewers who realize that their expertise is limited have a responsibility to make their degree of competence clear to the editor. Reviewers should accept an assignment only if they have adequate expertise to provide an authoritative assessment.

Reviewer comments and conclusions should be based on an objective and impartial consideration of the facts, exclusive of personal or professional bias. All comments by reviewers should be based solely on the paper’s scientific merit, originality, and quality of writing, as well as on the relevance to the journal’s scope and mission.

If reviewers have any interest that might interfere with an objective review, they should either decline the role of reviewer or disclose the conflict of interest to the editor.

Reviewers are responsible for acting promptly, adhering to the instructions for completing a review, and submitting it in a timely manner. Every effort should be made to complete the review within the time requested.

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For many scientific journals, peer review is performed as a single masked, or single blind, system in which the names of the reviewers are unknown to the authors, but the names of the authors are known to reviewers and editors. Other journals use a double masked, or double blind, system, in which the reviewers do not know the identity of the authors or their affiliation.

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Some journals find it useful to publicly thank reviewers for their generous volunteer efforts. This may take the form of a published list of reviewers that appears in the journal on a regular (annually, semiannually) basis. Journals may also offer continuing medical education credits for completed reviews.

Source: Council of Science Editors