For Reviewers

We appreciate applications to join our community of peer reviewers. Please send an email with your detailed resume to the Journal editor and create an account as a reviewer in Journal and include your research interest in the profile.

Editors and Reviewers

Editors and reviewers should decline to be involved with a submission when they

• Have a recent publication or current submission with any author
• Share or recently shared an affiliation with any author
• Collaborate or recently collaborated with any author
• Have a close personal connection to any author
• Have a financial interest in the subject of the work
• Feel unable to be objective

Peer review Process

There is no specific structure; however, the reviewer report should comprehensively critique the submission and consist of more than a few brief sentences. The report should give authors constructive analysis, particularly where revisions are recommended.

To help authors receive timely reviews, it is requested that reviewer reports should be submitted via the online system on or before the deadline. Reviewers should contact us if they are unable to meet the deadline.

We encourage reviewers to focus their reports on objectively critiquing the submission's scientific aspects, including the methodology's soundness and whether the results can support the conclusions. At the end of their review, we ask reviewers to recommend one of the following actions:

• Accept it as it is
• Accept after Minor revision
• Accept after major revision
• Resubmit after revision
• Submit somewhere else
• Reject

However, it is important to note that the Editor will make the overall decision.

While expectations vary by discipline, some core aspects that reviewers should critique may include the following:

• Is the language clear, easy to read, and understandable?
• Are the research questions valid, and is the sample size sufficient?
• Is there necessary ethical approval?
• Is the abstract an accurate summary of the research and results without spin?
• Are the methods and study design appropriate for answering the research question?
• Do the experiments have appropriate controls?
• Is the reporting of the methods, including any equipment and materials, sufficiently detailed that the research might be reproduced?
• Are any statistical tests used appropriately and correctly reported?
• Are the figures and tables clear, and do they accurately represent the results?
• Has previous research by the authors and others been discussed, and have those results been compared to the current results?
• Are there any inappropriate citations, for example, not supporting the claim or too many citations to the authors’ own articles?
• Do the results support the conclusions?
• Are limitations of the research acknowledged?

Where reviewers do not wish authors to see certain comments, these can be added to the confidential comments of the Academic Editor.

Reviewers must declare any remaining interests in the ‘Confidential’ section of the review form, which the editor will consider.

Editors and reviewers must declare if they have previously discussed the manuscript with the authors.

Editors and reviewers do not ask authors to include references merely to increase citations to their own work, to the journal, or to another associated journal. For Publication Ethics, please see the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Manuscripts under peer review should be strictly confidential. Reviewers must not share manuscripts or discuss their content with anyone outside the peer review process.