Reviewer Guidelines

General 

We acknowledge that time is a scarce resource. Therefore, we greatly appreciate our reviewers for contributing their valuable time and expertise to maintaining the standards of our journals. Reviewers are encouraged to consult our step-by-step guide to reviewing a manuscript, available here. 


Confidentiality 

Wiley is committed to ensuring integrity in the peer review process. We expect all peer reviewers to comply with COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers, including respecting the confidentiality of peer review; refraining from using information obtained during the peer review process for their own or another’s advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others; and not revealing any details of a manuscript or communications related to it, during or after the peer review process. This confidentiality obligation extends to the review and all communications regarding the review, meaning that reviewers should under no circumstance directly contact the authors at any stage of the peer review process. 

Reviewers should never approach the authors of a manuscript to be included as authors to the manuscript at revision stage. If the reviewer makes significant contributions to the results of the paper, a detailed letter presenting the extraordinary circumstances should be sent to the editorial office for evaluation. Failure to comply with this policy will result in a reject decision.  

Reviewers should not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript (including early career researchers they are mentoring), without first obtaining permission from the journal. The names of any individuals who have helped with the review should be included where prompted so that they are associated with the manuscript in the journal’s records and can also receive due recognition for their efforts. 

For more information on peer review policy and peer review models please refer to the Wiley Review Confidentiality Policy. 

Conflict of Interest 

Reviewers should consider whether they have any conflict(s) of interest that may have an impact on the impartiality of the review. The invitation to review should be declined if any of the following situations apply: 

  • Collaboration with any of the authors in the last 36 months, including, but not limited to publications and current submissions.  
  • Authors with the same institutional affiliation as your own, including cases where there are multiple affiliations.  
  • Close personal relationship (spouse or family member) or professional connection (past or present PhD students and postdocs) with any of the authors. 
  • Financial interests related to or impacted by the manuscript under review or its topic. 
  • Inability to be objective. 

Failure to disclose a conflict of interest will be investigated and may lead to sanctions from the journal. Should the reviewer feel like they can maintain objectivity despite a potential conflict of interest, they are expected to inform the editor or editorial office upon receiving the invitation to review.  

It is also important for reviewers to remain unbiased by considerations related to the nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or other characteristics of the authors, origin of a manuscript or by commercial considerations.  

Reviewer Reports and Recommendations 

We ask reviewers to express their recommendation in their report. The final decision by the responsible editor is informed by the strength of the arguments of the author and all reviewers and may not always agree with all the reviewer recommendations. 

In making a recommendation you are encouraged to consider the applicability of the manuscript to the aims and scope of the journal. Focus should be on providing feedback related to the research and science presented in the manuscript, rather than on formatting issues that will be addressed by our production editor. 

What should the reviewer report evaluate? 

  • the importance of the paper compared to published work in this subject area. Please put the reported findings into the context of impact on the subject area and breadth of interest to the scientific community.
  • the novelty compared to published work in this subject area. The level of novelty can be rated as outstanding (top 5% compared to published work in the same subject area), high (top 15%), considerable (top 30%), moderate (top 50%), marginal (bottom 50%), low (bottom 30%).
  • if the methods, data, and analysis adequately test the hypothesis and support the conclusions. For acceptance, the hypothesis must be tested, and the main conclusions supported by an appropriate choice of methods as well as sufficient quality of data and robust analysis. 
  • if the methods, data, and analysis are described in sufficient detail to be reproduced by the scientific community. Please comment on any technical inconsistencies and missing information (insufficient experimental and theoretical details; use of non-standardized technical setup, methods, and analysis; missing error bars in data plots; etc.).
  • if there are any ethical concerns related to the manuscript. This includes:
    • misconduct related to planning and execution of the research. 
    • misconduct that might have occurred during either the writing or submission of the manuscript (plagiarism, concurrent submission, dual/fragmented publication, image/data manipulation, authorship, etc.).
    • Conflict of interest or bias.
    • Discrimination or use of defamatory language that may harm others and/or their reputation etc.
  • scholarly presentation improvements, including:  
    • Clarity: the meaning of the reported findings is clear and unambiguous. 
    • The language is grammatically and linguistically correct. 
    • The writing style of the article is appropriate for a scientific publication. 
    • The manuscript structure is logical. 
    • Display Items: the figures, schemes and tables are appropriate, of sufficient quality and properly labeled. 
    • The reference list is balanced and gives proper credit to published works. Suggestions for additional references that are relevant for the paper are permitted. However, reviewers should never ask authors to cite the reviewers’ own articles. Should there be a strong scholarly rationale for the authors to cite the reviewer’s work, the reviewer is expected to add a note in the Comments to the Editor section explaining this. The issue of inappropriate citation (including citation stacking and citation cartels) has been discussed by COPE, and COPE have produced a discussion document on citation manipulation with recommendations for best practice. 
    • The Supporting Information (where applicable) is appropriate, self-contained and needs no additional editing. 
    • Other aspects need further improvement. 

Reviewers should strive to write clearly, be objective and constructive, and treat the author’s manuscript and work as they would like their own to be treated. As a suggested format, the “ideal” review will cover the following points: 

  1. Summary 
    Begin your report with a short summary of what the paper is about. Please put the findings into the context of the existing state-of-the-art and indicate the overall significance of the work. Please provide an impression of the overall quality of the work and its strengths, and state whether there are any major flaws or weaknesses.  

  2. Major issues 
    Are there any flaws (technological, design, or interpretation), what are they, and what is the severity of their impact on the findings? Has similar work already been published? Is it cited? Do the current results confirm or contradict earlier findings? If findings that contradict current thinking are presented, is the evidence strong enough to support their case? If not, what additional experiments would be required? If major revisions are required, what are they? Are there major issues in the presentation, such as language, structure, or data presentation?  

  3. Minor issues 
    Avoid focusing on the format and layout of the article. Please indicate if and where the meaning is unclear or ambiguous, if the reference list is balanced and gives proper credit to published work, if there are factual, numerical, or unit errors, and if the figures, tables, and schemes are appropriate, of sufficient quality, and properly labeled.  

A good review is a balanced critique of both the positive and negative attributes of the paper; specific feedback is more useful than general comments.