Peer review guidance
Peer reviewers are experts who volunteer to offer their time to improve the manuscripts they review and to help the Editor-in-Chief determine whether the manuscript should be published in World J Exp Biosci. The names of referees will not be made available to authors.
After the Editor-in-Chief’s invitation to review a submitted paper, the reviewer should consider the following aspects:
- If there is only one section of the manuscript that you are unfamiliar with, it may be the case to ask the Editor-in-Chief if other reviewers have the required expertise in this section. The support of an Expert for statistical evaluation, epidemiology data, animal studies, etc.).
- If you do have not time to review the manuscript, let us know promptly and if possible suggest alternative reviewers.
- If you have potential conflicts of interest please let us know promptly so that we can find an alternative reviewer
Before sending your review to the Editor-in-Chief please rate the following aspects:
- Novelty: If this is a research manuscript, is the research question important? What value does it add to the scientific literature? If the conclusions are not original, please provide the relevant references. If a review article, does the manuscript offer any new perspectives? Subjectively speaking, would this manuscript be of interest to people of your own discipline and/or other medical disciplines?
- Quality: Do the Title and Abstract reflect the content of the manuscript? Does the Introduction describe what the author hopes to achieve? It should summarize the relevant current research and literature to provide context.
- Scientific Soundness: Is the study appropriately designed to investigate the research question? What, in your opinion, are the strengths of the manuscript? Is there anything that you would suggest that could improve the organization of the manuscript and the information flow?
- Are any statistical tests used appropriately? Are probability values accurately described? Are the claims supported by the results or literature reviewed? Does the manuscript/author support or contradict previous theories? Are the claims in the discussion supported by the results? Have the authors discussed any limitations to their manuscript? Are they appropriate to the manuscript? Is the meaning of any tables/figures clear? Are they correctly labeled? Are they all necessary? Would additional ones be useful? What, in your opinion, are the limitations of the manuscript?
- Interest to the Readers: Are the conclusions interesting for the readership of the journal? Will the paper attract a wide readership, or be of interest only to a limited number of people?
- Overall Merit: Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work advance the current knowledge?
- English Level: Is the English language appropriate and understandable?
We kindly ask peer reviewers to comment fully on all aspects of the manuscript to help the Editor-in-Chief make the final decision.
- If you believe the manuscript should be rejected or requires substantial revision, it is important to motivate the relevant criticisms. Please note that you are not required to correct style, grammar, or spelling as this will be done if the manuscript is accepted, but any help you can give in clarifying the meaning is appreciated.
- Feedback should be constructive to the author. For instance, if you are suggesting a significant modification, please note the reasons why and provide supporting references.
- Please be clear about which aspects of your review are your opinion and which are based on the scientific literature. Note that as a peer reviewer, you aim to comment on the quality and rigor of the work received. If you are suggesting additions, please specify which are necessary/essential to support the claims of the manuscript under review and which simply represent a suggestion for future further work
- Peer reviewers can provide confidential comments to the Editor-in-Chief in addition to their comments to the authors. Any suspicion of plagiarism should be mentioned to the Editor-in-Chief.
Reviewers' Conflicts of Interest and Confidentiality
- Peer Reviewers must disclose any conflicts of interest that could bias opinions of the manuscript and should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists.
- Manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and are the private property of the authors. Therefore, reviewers must respect the author’s rights by not publicly discussing the author’s work or appropriating their ideas before the manuscript is published.
- Reviewers must not make copies of the manuscript and are prohibited from sharing them with others.
- Reviewers should return or destroy copies of manuscripts after submitting reviews.
We advise the reviewers download the review form
