Guide for Reviewers

The Responsibility of the Peer Reviewer

The Peer Reviewer is responsible for critically reading and evaluating a manuscript in his specialty field, and then providing respectful, constructive, and honest feedback to authors about their submission.

Before reviewing please consider the following:

• Does the article you are being asked to review match your expertise?
• If you receive a manuscript that covers a topic that does not sufficiently match your area of expertise, please notify the editors as soon as possible. Please feel free to recommend an alternate reviewer.
• The review of an article should be completed within two weeks. If you cannot complete the review within this time frame, please let the editors know and if possible, suggest an alternate reviewer.
• Please disclose all potential conflicts of interest to the editors before reviewing.

The Review

When reviewing the article, please keep the following in mind:

Content Quality and Originality

Is the article sufficiently novel and interesting to warrant publication? Does the article adhere to the journal's standards? A quick literature search using tools such as Scopus could be needed to check if there are any reviews of the area. If the research has been covered previously, pass on references of those works to the editors.

Organization and Clarity

• Title: Does it clearly describe the article?
• Abstract: Does it reflect the content of the article?
• Introduction: Does it clearly state the problem being investigated? Normally, the introduction should summarize relevant research to provide context and explain what other authors' findings, if any, are being challenged or extended. It should describe the experiment, the hypothesis(es), and the general experimental design or method.
• Experimental: Does the author accurately explain how the data were collected? Was the sampling appropriate? Is the design suitable for answering the question posed? Is there sufficient information present to replicate the research? Does the article identify the procedures followed? Are these ordered in a meaningful way? If the methods are new, are they explained in detail? Have the equipment and materials been adequately described? Has the author been precise in describing measurements?
• Results & Discussion: Is the appropriate analysis conducted? Are the statistics correct?
• Conclusion: Are the claims in this section supported by the results, do they seem reasonable? Does the article support or contradict previous theories? Does the conclusion explain how the research has moved the body of scientific knowledge forward?
• Tables, Figures, Images: Are they appropriate? Do they properly show the data? Are they easy to interpret and understand?