Reviewer guidelines
Peer review process
All submitted manuscripts are sent for review unless they are out of scope or below the threshold level of the journal.
Unless otherwise stated, the manuscripts will be sent to two experts for an informed recommendation on whether the articles should be accepted for publication. Statistical reviewers are also used where necessary.
Typically we employ 'double-blind' review system where both reviewer and author are anonymous to each other.
Once the reviews have been received by the editor, a decision is made whether to accept the manuscript, ask for a revised version, or reject it. Ultimate responsibility for editorial decisions rests with the Editor-in-Chief of that journal.
Reviewers are asked to declare any competing interests.
Reviewer guidelines
We are very grateful to our reviewers for taking time to review submitted manuscripts. In order to make best use of that time, this is a brief list of things we will ask you to look for when reviewing. In general we look to publish work which is coherent, valid and adds to the scientific body of knowledge. We don't specifically put emphasis on levels of perceived interest.
If the quality of English needs improving, the reviewers can recommend the manuscript be edited by our partner Enago.
Reviewers should indicate major compulsory revisions (if any) by suggesting additional work or clarifications and referring to page numbers on the submitted manuscript. These comments should be numbered with a prefix of 1 e.g:
1.1 (p2) Data does not match that reported in the table.
1.2 (p5) No baseline data in this study. Suggest repeating experiment with baselines.
Minor essential revisions should be numbered as above, but with a prefix of 2. Minor essential revisions include things like, missing labels on figures, wrong use of a term, spelling mistakes:2.1 (p1) Author refers to NCSSSC when correct abbreviation is NSCCCS
2.2 (p5) Figure 3 has no legend
Discretionary revisions are recommendations for improvement of the manuscript which the author may choose to ignore. Examples include clarifications, preferred use of grammar or additional data which would be useful but not essential. Discretionary revisions should be prefixed with a number 3 e.g.
3.1 (p3) Would be useful to include reference to original study here
3.2 (p8) 'Would have' rather than 'would of'
Reviewer recommendation
Based on your assessment of the validity of the manuscript, we would request you to select one of the following recommendations:
Accept without revision
Accept with minor essential revisions
Major compulsory revision requested
Reject because scientifically or ethically unsound
Reject because out of scope or too small an advance to publish
Review comments should be submitted in the review template within our online peer review system or uploaded as a single Word file.
Private comments to the editor can also be uploaded through the system.