Guidelines for Reviewers

Even though it is time-consuming responsibility, reviewing a fellow scientist\'s manuscript is a privilege which is an exciting educational experience. A reviewer should ensure that the manuscript is within their expertise before accepting the review.

Guidelines:

Before agreeing to review

The reviewers are invited to submit their comments within the tentative time, although extensions can be granted. If the reviewer doesn’t have time to accept the invitation, they should immediately intimate to the editor or suggest potential reviewers who can review the manuscript.

Conflict of interest: As a reviewer, your task is to critically and constructively judge the content of a manuscript.

Review process:

The reviewer should not allow personal prejudice to the researchers in giving the comments for the manuscript. The review comments should be professional and should help the author to improve their quality of the paper and present their research as clearly as possible.

When reviewing a paper, the reviewer should take following points into consideration:

• Originality and quality: After accepting the review, the reviewer should check for the originality of the research work and quality of the manuscript submitted.

• Structure: The reviewer should check the manuscript for abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion.

• Timeline: The duration for the reviewers to review the manuscript is 14 days.

• Confidentiality: The reviewer should contact only the editor for any further queries as confidentiality has to be maintained.

Review Report:

The reviewers should focus on the following when evaluating a manuscript:

• Originality of the research
• Contribution to the respective field
• Quality
• Clarity of presentation
• Depth of research

Recommendations:

Reviewers’ recommendation should be either:

• Accept
• Minor revision
• Major revision
• Does not match with the scope of the journal. Submit to another journal
• Reject

Responsibilities:

• The reviewer should analyze the manuscript for the merits and demerits, give an honest and exact comment and provide necessary suggestions to increase the quality of the work.
• The reviewer should not review the manuscript that is co-authored by him/her and anyone related to their institution.
• After accepting the review, the reviewer should contact only the editor for any further queries as confidentiality has to be maintained.
• The reviewer is also responsible for informing the editor regarding the suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, or any ethical concerns about the use of animals or humans in the research submitted by the author.
• Reviewers should observe whether the authors have followed the publication ethics, instruction for authors, and editorial policies.