Reviewer Guidelines

REVIEWER'S GUIDELINES

Peer review is the backbone of scholarly publishing. The objectives of these guidelines are to help the peer-reviewers and provide an ethical overview. Reading these guidelines may help the reviewers to find the answers to most of the queries and provide guidance in completing a peer review report in a thorough and prompt way. If you have any further queries, please write to [email protected]

Purpose of Review

  • To help authors improve their manuscripts, apply your professional expertise to help others.
  • To assist in maintaining a good, meticulous peer-review process resulting in the publication of good quality papers.
  • To make the author aware of any additional literature that may provide useful comparison or clarification of an approach.

Guidelines

  • All manuscripts submitted to IJPSDR are subject to double-blind) peer review. Reviewers should consider the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers before accepting to review a manuscript and throughout the peer-review process.
  • Once the reviewer receives a request for peer review it is necessary that the peer reviewers respond in a timely manner, particularly if they cannot do the review, to avoid unnecessarily delaying the review process.
  • Peer reviewers must keep any information regarding the identity of the authors and the content of the manuscript confidential.
  • Peer review comments should be objective and constructive without being of a hostile or derogatory nature.
  • Refer to the instructions for Authors to see if the manuscript meets the submission criteria of the journal (Author’s Guidelines).
  • Complete the review and indicate the relative strengths or weaknesses of the manuscript by uploading your comments on the online peer-review platform.
  • Once you’ve read the manuscript and have assessed its quality, you need to make a recommendation to the editor regarding publication as follows:
    • Accept - if the manuscript is suitable for publication in its current form.
    • Revisions - if the manuscript will be ready for publication after light revisions. Please list the revisions you would recommend.
    • Reject - if the manuscript is not suitable for publication in this journal or if the revisions that need to be undertaken are too many for the submission to continue being considered in its current form.
  • Detailed comments to be provided which will be suitable for transmission to the authors.
  • Mention the comments to the author, as an opportunity to seek clarification on any unclear points and for further elaboration.
  • Confirm whether you feel the subject of the manuscript is sufficiently interesting to justify its length; if you recommend shortening, it is useful to the author(s) if you can indicate specific areas where you think that shortening is required.
  • It will be helpful if you correct the English where the technical meaning is unclear.
  • Once the comments are pasted or uploaded you can submit them to the editor; Editor will send those comments to the author(s) for revisions.
  • If you are unable to complete your report on a manuscript in the agreed time frame please inform the editor, so that the refereeing process is not delayed.
  • Make the editors aware of any potential conflicts of interest that may affect the manuscript under review.