Reviewer Policy and Guidelines

These guidelines define the responsibilities, ethical expectations, evaluation standards, and review procedures for peer reviewers. They are intended for use across journals and disciplines, with journal- or article-specific instructions applied where necessary. Framework: aligned with recognized scholarly publishing principles, including COPE reviewer ethics and DOAJ transparency and peer-review expectations.

Peer Review Model

The journals follow a double-blind peer-review process for manuscripts that require external peer review. The purpose of peer review is to support fair, rigorous, constructive, and evidence-based editorial decision-making.

• The identities of the authors are withheld from reviewers.

• The identities of reviewers are withheld from authors.

• Reviewers must not attempt to discover, verify, or contact the authors during the review process.

• If a reviewer inadvertently recognizes or strongly suspects an author’s identity, this alone does not automatically invalidate the review. However, the reviewer must inform the editor immediately if that knowledge creates, or could reasonably be perceived to create, a conflict of interest.

• Editorial decisions are made by the editor based on the manuscript, reviewer reports, journal policy, and applicable ethical requirements. Reviewers provide recommendations; they do not make the final publication decision.

• Where the journal requires two or more independent reviews, each reviewer should provide an independent assessment and should not coordinate with other reviewers unless the editor explicitly authorizes discussion.

• Reviewers are external to the manuscript’s author group and, wherever feasible, at least one reviewer per manuscript is external to the journal’s editorial board.

• Reviewer reports, invitations and recommendations are retained securely by the journal for a minimum of five years and may be provided in anonymised form to abstracting and indexing services or institutions conducting a legitimate assessment of the journal’s peer-review process.

Before Accepting a Review Invitation

Expertise and Suitability

Accept an invitation only when you have sufficient subject knowledge and methodological competence to assess the manuscript fairly. Reviewers may be academics, researchers, practitioners, clinicians, engineers, legal scholars, or other suitably qualified experts depending on the discipline.

• A specific degree such as a PhD or MD is not universally mandatory unless required for a particular journal or subject area.

• Selection should be based on demonstrated expertise, relevant research or professional experience, publication record where appropriate, and the ability to provide a competent review.

• Early-career researchers may review when they have suitable expertise and the editor considers them qualified. Supervised co-reviewing requires prior editorial permission.

• Reviewers are asked to register an ORCID iD and to keep their reviewer profile (affiliation, institutional e-mail, expertise keywords) current so that the journal can verify their identity and expertise.

Conflicts of Interest

Before accessing or reviewing the manuscript in detail, consider whether any relationship or interest could affect—or reasonably appear to affect—your impartiality.

• Collaboration or co-authorship within the past three years, affiliation with the same institution or department as an author, supervision, mentorship, employment, institutional dependence, personal relationship, rivalry, financial interest, intellectual property interest, or direct competition may constitute a conflict.

• If a potential conflict exists, disclose it promptly to the editor. Do not decide privately that a conflict is insignificant if a reasonable editor would want to know about it.

• If uncertain, ask the editor before proceeding.

Availability

• Accept the invitation only if you can provide a careful review within the requested timeframe. The standard review period is 21 days from acceptance of the invitation; reviewers are asked to respond to invitations within 5 working days so that alternative reviewers can be invited without delay.

• If circumstances change, notify the editorial office promptly and request an extension or withdraw from the assignment rather than submit a rushed review.

Reviewer Identity Verification and Review Integrity

• The journal verifies reviewer identity before sending a manuscript, using an institutional e-mail address, ORCID iD, and/or a verifiable publication record. Reviewer accounts using only personal e-mail addresses that cannot be verified are not used.

• Reviewers must not create or use alternative accounts, must not review manuscripts on behalf of another person, and must not accept a review request that originates from an author rather than from the journal.

• Reviewers suggested by authors are treated as any other candidate and are independently verified; they are never the sole reviewers of a manuscript.

• Evidence of peer-review manipulation is investigated under COPE guidance and may result in rejection or retraction of the manuscript and removal of the reviewer from the reviewer database.

Confidentiality and Secure Handling

Manuscripts under review are confidential documents. The manuscript, supplementary files, data, reviewer forms, editorial correspondence, and information learned during review must be protected.

• Do not share, forward, copy, post, publish, present, or discuss the manuscript outside the authorized peer-review process.

• Do not use unpublished information, ideas, methods, data, code, figures, or interpretations obtained through peer review for personal, professional, commercial, competitive, or research advantage.

• Do not contact authors directly about the manuscript.

• Do not delegate the review, ask a student/colleague to assist, or involve a co-reviewer without prior permission from the editor. If permission is granted, the contributor should be identified to the journal so that the contribution is recorded appropriately.

• Do not retain unnecessary local copies of the manuscript or review files after the review process is complete. Delete confidential copies in accordance with journal instructions and institutional security requirements.

• Take reasonable precautions to prevent identifying information from appearing in uploaded review files, comments, tracked changes, filenames, document properties, or metadata.

Use of Generative AI and External Tools Because manuscripts under review are confidential, reviewers must not upload manuscript text, figures, data, supplementary files, or identifiable excerpts to public or third-party generative AI systems, translation tools, or other external services unless the journal has explicitly authorized their use and appropriate confidentiality/data-protection safeguards are in place. Reviewers remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, confidentiality, and integrity of their review report. Reviewers must declare to the editor any use of an AI tool that was authorised by the journal, and must not use AI tools to generate the substance of the review or the recommendation.

Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers

Objectivity, Fairness, and Respect

• Evaluate the work on scholarly merit, methodological quality, clarity, relevance, originality, and evidentiary support—not on personal preference or characteristics unrelated to the work.

• Do not allow nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, political beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, disability, institutional prestige, geography, commercial considerations, or other irrelevant characteristics to influence the review.

• Write in a professional, specific, respectful, and constructive manner. Avoid hostile, sarcastic, humiliating, discriminatory, or personal remarks.

• Critique the manuscript, not the presumed authors.

Intellectual Property and Citation Ethics

• Respect the intellectual property contained in the manuscript.

• Do not delay a review to gain competitive advantage.

• Do not request citation of your own work or another author’s work unless the citation is genuinely relevant and improves the scholarly record.

• Never use peer review to manipulate citations or inflate citation counts.

Suspected Misconduct

If you identify possible plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or falsified data, image manipulation, citation manipulation, unethical research, undeclared conflicts, inappropriate authorship, paper-mill indicators, or another integrity concern:

• Report the concern confidentially to the editor with specific evidence or locations in the manuscript.

• Do not investigate the authors personally, contact their institution, or make allegations in comments intended for the authors unless the editor instructs otherwise.

• Distinguish between an honest error, a methodological weakness, and suspected misconduct wherever possible.

How to Evaluate a Manuscript

The review should assess whether the manuscript is scientifically or scholarly sound, clearly reported, ethically appropriate, and suitable for the journal. Apply discipline-specific standards where relevant.

Criterion	Reviewer Questions
Title and Abstract	Are they accurate, informative, concise, and consistent with the manuscript? Does the abstract fairly reflect the objectives, methods, principal findings, and conclusions?
Originality and Contribution	Does the work offer a meaningful contribution, new evidence, synthesis, method, application, interpretation, or perspective? Are novelty claims proportionate and supported?
Introduction / Background	Is the problem clearly defined? Is the relevant literature represented fairly? Are the objectives, questions, or hypotheses explicit?
Methods / Methodology	Is the design appropriate and sufficiently described? Are sampling, materials, datasets, procedures, instruments, algorithms, interventions, analysis, and validation methods adequate and reproducible where applicable?
Results / Findings	Are findings presented clearly and accurately? Are analyses appropriate? Are tables, figures, images, equations, and visualizations necessary, legible, and consistent with the text?
Discussion	Are findings interpreted in relation to the objectives and prior literature? Are alternative explanations considered? Are limitations acknowledged?
Conclusion	Are conclusions supported by the evidence and appropriately limited in scope? Do they avoid overstatement?
References	Are citations relevant, balanced, sufficiently current where appropriate, and accurately connected to claims? Is there evidence of inappropriate citation practices?
Language and Presentation	Is the manuscript understandable and logically organized? Identify language problems that impede scientific assessment, but do not turn the review into line-by-line copyediting unless requested.
Ethics and Transparency	Where applicable, are ethical approval, consent, registration, funding, conflicts of interest, data availability, code/material availability, and other required declarations adequately reported?

Reporting Guidelines and Research Transparency

Reviewers should consider whether the manuscript follows an appropriate reporting guideline when one exists for the study or article type. The objective is to assess completeness and transparency of reporting, not to reject work merely because a checklist was not formatted exactly as preferred.

• Randomized trials: CONSORT, where applicable.

• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: PRISMA, where applicable.

• Observational studies: STROBE, where applicable.

• Diagnostic accuracy studies: STARD, where applicable.

• Case reports: CARE, where applicable.

• Animal research: ARRIVE, where applicable.

• Qualitative research: an appropriate qualitative reporting guideline such as COREQ or SRQR, where applicable.

• Prediction models: TRIPOD; economic evaluations: CHEERS; study protocols: SPIRIT; sex and gender reporting: SAGER; other designs: the relevant EQUATOR Network guideline, where applicable.

• Check that the ethics-committee name and approval number, informed-consent statement and (for trials) prospective registration number are present and consistent with the study described; alert the editor if they are missing.

• Other disciplines or study designs: use recognized field-specific reporting standards, community norms, or journal instructions.

• Where relevant, assess whether data, code, materials, protocols, preregistration/registration information, and analytical decisions are described sufficiently to support verification and reproducibility.

Data, Statistics, Figures, and Supplementary Material

• Assess whether the dataset or evidence base is appropriate for the research question.

• Check whether statistical or analytical methods are suitable and adequately explained. If specialist statistical review is needed, tell the editor rather than guessing outside your expertise.

• Look for unexplained inconsistencies between text, tables, figures, supplementary files, and reported sample sizes.

• Assess whether figures and images appear accurate and whether any manipulation, duplication, selective presentation, or misleading visualization raises concern.

• Evaluate supplementary material when it forms part of the evidence for the manuscript and is included within the scope of review.

• Where sex, gender, demographic, geographic, or other population variables are scientifically relevant, assess whether they are reported and interpreted appropriately. Do not require irrelevant demographic analyses.

• Confirm that the title, abstract and keywords are in clear English and that the abstract accurately reflects the content, and note any references that are not in Roman script or lack sufficient bibliographic detail, because these affect the article’s discoverability in indexing databases.

Writing the Review Report

A useful review is evidence-based, prioritized, actionable, and clearly separates essential scientific concerns from optional suggestions.

Recommended Structure

1. Briefly summarize the manuscript’s purpose, approach, and contribution in your own words.

2. State the principal strengths of the work.

3. List major comments—issues affecting validity, interpretation, reproducibility, ethics, or the central contribution.

4. List minor comments—clarifications, presentation issues, missing details, or limited corrections that do not alter the main conclusions.

5. Provide confidential comments to the editor only when necessary—for example, conflicts, suspected misconduct, concerns about integrity, or information that should not be communicated directly to the authors.

Constructive Feedback

• Be specific: identify the section, table, figure, analysis, or claim concerned.

• Explain why an issue matters and, where possible, suggest a realistic way to address it.

• Do not insist that authors perform unnecessary experiments, analyses, or citations merely to expand the paper. In particular, do not recommend citations to your own work, to the journal, or to the editor unless they are essential to the argument; the editor will disregard citation requests that appear self-serving.

• Do not require authors to agree with your preferred interpretation when multiple interpretations are scientifically defensible.

• Ensure comments to authors are consistent with the recommendation sent to the editor.

Editorial Recommendation Categories

Use the recommendation options provided by the manuscript system. Where the following categories are available, apply them consistently:

Recommendation	When to Use
Accept	The manuscript is suitable for publication with no substantive changes.
Minor Revision	The manuscript is fundamentally sound but requires limited corrections or clarifications that do not change the core study or conclusions.
Major Revision	Substantial issues must be addressed before suitability can be determined, but the manuscript may become publishable through feasible revision.
Reject	The manuscript has fundamental problems that cannot reasonably be corrected through revision, falls outside scope, lacks adequate scholarly contribution, or presents serious validity/ethical concerns.
Important A recommendation is advisory. The editor may reach a different decision after considering all reviewer reports, editorial assessment, journal scope, and ethical or policy considerations.

Reviewing a Revised Manuscript

• Read the authors’ point-by-point response together with the revised manuscript.

• Check whether the major issues from the previous review have been addressed adequately.

• Do not introduce a completely new set of demands unless the revision reveals a new substantive issue or the earlier review could not reasonably have identified it.

• If you disagree with an author’s response, explain the remaining concern clearly and proportionately.

• Maintain confidentiality and conflict-of-interest obligations throughout all review rounds.

Communication with the Editorial Office

• Use the official manuscript system or journal-designated communication channel for all review-related correspondence.

• Contact the editor promptly if the manuscript is outside your expertise, a conflict is discovered, files are missing, ethical concerns arise, author identity is suspected and creates a conflict, or additional specialist review is needed.

• Do not negotiate publication decisions directly with authors.

• Respond to review invitations promptly, and if you cannot review, decline through the system and, where possible, suggest alternative qualified reviewers (with no conflict of interest and with institutional contact details).

• Do not disclose reviewer identity unless the journal explicitly operates a signed/open review model for that manuscript and you have agreed to it. Under double-blind review, reviewer identity must remain concealed from authors.

Reviewer Eligibility and Selection Principles

Reviewers should be selected on the basis of competence, independence, and relevance to the manuscript. Appropriate qualifications differ among disciplines.

• Demonstrable expertise in the manuscript’s subject area or methodology.

• Active or recent scholarly, research, technical, clinical, legal, professional, or practice-based engagement relevant to the field.

• Ability to assess the work objectively and communicate a reasoned review in professional English or another language accepted by the journal.

• No disqualifying conflict of interest.

• Willingness to comply with confidentiality, research-integrity, data-protection, and peer-review policies.

• A doctoral or professional degree may be preferred or required for some fields, but should not be treated as a universal eligibility rule across all journals.

• The journal maintains an international reviewer pool drawn from a range of countries and institutions, consistent with its scope, and monitors reviewer diversity so that no single institution or the editorial board alone supplies the majority of reviews.

Reviewer Submission Checklist

☐ I have the necessary expertise to review the manuscript.

☐ I have disclosed any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest.

☐ I have treated the manuscript and review materials as confidential.

☐ I have not attempted to identify or contact the authors.

☐ I have not shared the manuscript or involved another person without editorial permission.

☐ I have not uploaded confidential manuscript content to an unauthorized generative AI or external tool.

☐ I have assessed the methods, results, interpretation, references, ethics, and transparency requirements relevant to the article type.

☐ I have considered applicable reporting guidelines where relevant.

☐ My comments are specific, respectful, constructive, and free from discriminatory or personal remarks.

☐ I have separated major issues from minor suggestions.

☐ I have reported any suspected misconduct confidentially to the editor rather than investigating it myself.

☐ My recommendation is consistent with the concerns stated in my review.

☐ I have checked uploaded files for identifying metadata where applicable.

☐ I will delete or securely dispose of confidential local copies when the review process is complete.

☐ I have submitted my review within the agreed timeframe or requested an extension in advance.

☐ I have declared any authorised AI-tool use and have not used AI tools to write the substance of the review.

☐ I have checked that ethics approval, consent and registration statements are present where required.

☐ My reviewer profile and ORCID iD are current.

Reviewer Recognition

Reviewer Misconduct and Removal

Breach of confidentiality, misuse of unpublished material, undeclared conflicts of interest, abusive or discriminatory comments, citation coercion, identity misrepresentation, unauthorised delegation, unauthorised use of AI tools, or repeated failure to deliver accepted reviews will be investigated by the Editor-in-Chief in line with COPE guidance. Outcomes may include a warning, exclusion from the reviewer database, notification of the reviewer’s institution where warranted, and, for the affected manuscript, replacement of the review.

Journals may provide reviewer certificates, acknowledgments, contribution records, reviewer dashboards, professional-development opportunities, or other forms of recognition. Recognition must not compromise the confidentiality of a double-blind review or imply that favorable recommendations are rewarded. Reviewers may record verified reviews for the journal in Web of Science Reviewer Recognition (formerly Publons) and in their ORCID record; the journal will confirm review completion for this purpose without revealing the reviewer’s identity to authors.

Ethical Framework and Reference Standards

These common guidelines are informed by recognized principles for responsible peer review and transparent scholarly publishing, including:

• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

• COPE / DOAJ / OASPA / WAME, Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), guidance on transparent peer-review processes and independent quality control.

• Clarivate, Web of Science Core Collection Editorial Selection Process (peer-review and ethics quality criteria).

• Elsevier/Scopus Content Selection & Advisory Board (CSAB): journal policy and peer-review criteria.

• ICMJE Recommendations (Responsibilities in the Submission and Peer-Review Process); COPE guidance on AI in peer review and on peer-review manipulation.

Journal-specific policies, disciplinary standards, legal requirements, and article-type reporting guidelines may supplement these common requirements. Where a journal-specific instruction is stricter, reviewers should follow that instruction.

Core Principle Peer review should improve the scholarly record. A reviewer’s role is to provide an independent, confidential, fair, timely, and constructive assessment that helps editors make sound decisions and helps authors strengthen valid research.