Reviewer Guidelines

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Conducting a review


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.

To give our reviewers the recognition they deserve for their peer review contributions, our journals provide the option to record peer review activity in the ORCID record or through the Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service, in full compliance with our journals’ review policy.

We pre-screen manuscripts to ensure that the quality, relevance, and interest suit the requirements of the journal and its readership. If a reviewer is not able to review a manuscript at all, as they don’t have the necessary time or expertise, or by the deadline provided, they should inform us immediately so that an alternative reviewer can be found so the review process doesn’t get unduly delayed. A short extension of the reviewing deadline is certainly possible; please let us know if this is required. Suggestions for suitable alternative reviewers are greatly appreciated, but reviewers should not approach alternative reviewers directly, as manuscripts should be kept confidential. Unless a review deadline extension request is sent to the editorial office, we will assume that reports will be sent by the deadline.

Reviewers may be asked to evaluate a revised version of a manuscript; however, we will not send a manuscript back for re-review if we judge the authors have not made a serious attempt to revise their manuscript in response to the reviewers’ comments.

Reviewers should be aware of our journal policies for authors regarding conflict of interest. All authors must declare financial/commercial conflicts of interest. If the authors have no conflicts of interest, this should be stated.

We also encourage our reviewers to check that authors provide all the information to evaluate reported methods, results, and conclusions. Accurate and complete reporting of research enables readers to fully appraise research, replicate it, and use it.


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. For journals with single-, double- or triple-blind review models, this confidentiality obligation extends to the review and all communications regarding the review.

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 here.


Conflict of Interest

We try to ensure that the reviewers we select are experts in the relevant topic and do not have a 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 (including in relation to any Company and/or commercial product mentioned in the article). If the conflict is serious enough to preclude the reviewer’s participation, the invitation to review should be declined. If you would like to discuss what constitutes a serious conflict, please contact the Editorial Office prior to accepting an invitation.

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. If you discover a competing interest, or if you have a personal relationship (e.g., collaboration, mentorship, etc.) with one of the manuscript authors, notify the journal and seek advice. While waiting for a response, refrain from looking at the manuscript and associated material in case the request to review is rescinded.


Transferability of peer review

Authors of good quality manuscripts that cannot be accepted in the journal submitted to may be referred to other journals published by Wiley within a similar subject area. If authors choose to pursue this option, their manuscript along with the peer reviewer reports will be transferred to the receiving journal to expedite any further evaluation and the editor's decision.  The primary objective of this collaboration is to reduce the incidence of redundant reviews, thus lessening the burden on the already overstretched community of peer reviewers.  By accepting the invitation to review for the journal you also consent to the possible transfer of your name and review to a relevant alternate journal.


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Preparing your review for submission


Initial steps

Read the manuscript, supplementary data files and supporting material thoroughly (e.g., reviewer instructions, required ethics and policy statements). It is important to understand the scope of the review before commencing (e.g., is a review of raw data expected?). Get back to the journal if anything is unclear or to request any missing or incomplete items. Do not contact the authors directly.


Please evaluate the novelty, importance and structure of the manuscript

  • Does the manuscript contain new and significant information to justify publication?
  • Does the Abstract (Summary) clearly and accurately describe the content of the article?
  • Is the problem significant and concisely stated?
  • Are the experimental and/or theoretical methods described comprehensively?
  • Are the interpretations and conclusions justified by the results?
  • Is adequate reference made to other work in the field?
  • Is the language acceptable?
  • Is the length of article adequate? Are the number of tables and figures adequate?

Please elaborate on the necessity of scholarly presentation improvement

When evaluating the scholarly presentation, please assess whether:

  • 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 and appropriate for the selected article type.
  • 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.
  • The Supporting Information (where applicable) is appropriate, self-contained and needs no additional editing.
  • Other aspects need further improvement.

Please elaborate on the necessity of scholarly presentation improvement in the Comments to Author section in a constructive and objective manner. If you have identified other aspects of presentation that need improvements, please specify in your comments. Please note that it is not the reviewers’ task to eliminate all inconsistencies of the work (including language errors) but to identify the aspects needing improvement (by the efforts of authors). Please provide reasons for each literature reference you suggest the authors should cite. The editor may exclude citation suggestions from the report to protect reviewers’ anonymity.

Please rate the priority for publishing this article (1 is the highest priority, 10 is the lowest priority)

1 − Outstanding:

  • The results are highly innovative and conceptually new.
  • The results corroborate or lead to a new important theory or practice or repudiate an established important theory or mechanism.
  • The scientific community has been waiting for such results for a long time.
  • The results are of high general interest and merit recognition by a wide research community.
  • The results represent a breakthrough in the field(s) of research and are critically important for specialists working in the same field.

2 − High:

  • The work contains a very high level of new results, providing significant new insights in the field of research.
  • The work is a very significant step forward to progress in the field and the reported results are of significant interest to a broad area of research.

3-4 − Considerable:

  • The results are novel and provide new insights in the field of research.
  • The reported results are important for specialists and of reasonably high general interest.

5-6 − Moderate:

  • The reported results have some elements of novelty and provide sufficient new insights in the field of research.
  • The reported results are important for specialists but of limited general interest.

7-8 − Marginal:

  • The level of novelty is limited as similar results have been reported but some new insights are provided (incremental work).
  • The reported results are less important for specialists and of limited general interest.

9-10 − Low:

  • The level of novelty is low as similar or better results have already been reported and no new insights are provided (redundant publication).
  • The reported results are unimportant and of low general interest.

 

Review Recommendation

In making a recommendation you are encouraged to consider the applicability of the manuscript to the aims and scope of the journal as well as to the category of the manuscript under review.

You will be prompted as a reviewer to select from one of the following recommendations:

Accept, appropriate to select if you believe the manuscript is ready for publication.

Minor revision, appropriate to select if you believe only simple revisions are necessary to make the manuscript worthy of publication. These types of revisions include correcting or adding more references, improving the quality of figures, correcting language, typos, or otherwise improving the presentation. Minor revision might also include providing more accurate explanations for some of the results or adding more results of control experiments that can be easily performed, that are not critical to supporting conclusions and that might not need further peer review for validation.

Major revision, appropriate to select if you believe that significant revisions to the manuscript are necessary before it could be reconsidered. These types of revisions include providing results of additional key experiments, or significant rewriting to attend to theoretical, methodological or other scholarly criteria.

Reject, appropriate to select if you believe the manuscript is not suitable for publication in this journal but could interest the readership of another journal OR the manuscript is not fit for publication anywhere and is not likely to become so in the future as it is flawed or has serious problems in the premise, experiments, or interpretation. Please specify in the Comments to Editor or Comments to Author section what revisions are required before transfer to a new journal.


Comments to Author

The system will prompt you to enter comments to the author(s). This section of the report is where you provide your arguments for the recommendation described above and can be used by the author to improve their manuscript for publication in the current or a more specialized journal. Comments can be entered directly in this field or attached as a separate, sanitized document.

Reviewers should strive to write clearly, especially for authors for whom English is not their first language, 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 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.

Given the possible disruption of experimental work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we ask our reviewers to bear in mind that some experiments may currently be hard to carry out. Therefore, please mention clearly which suggestions you consider to be essential.


Comments to Editor

The system will prompt you to enter any confidential comments you may have for the editorial team to consider in its review of the manuscript. These comments factor into the editorial decision-making process and provide a helpful mechanism to convey important information to help guide editorial decision making without being brought directly to the attention of author/s.

Please use the Comments to Editor field to provide any confidential information for the editorial office, to express a potential conflict of interest (positive or negative) as well as any limitations in professional expertise to review specific aspects of the paper, or to recommend alternative reviewers. If any of the aspects mentioned above prevent you from finalizing your report, please seek advice from the editorial office. 

For more detailed information and guidelines on preparing your review please visit Wiley Author Services here.


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Recording your peer review activity


ORCID

For recording their peer review activity, reviewers will need to have and provide an ORCID iD. To receive credit, reviewers should opt in to this feature when submitting their report to the editorial office and provide permission to update their ORCID record after completing the review. Authentication to ORCID to confirm authorization might be required. The reviewer identity will be protected; no manuscript or author details will be shown in the ORCID profile and information will not be shared with the author.

Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service

Through the Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service reviewers can effortlessly track, verify and showcase their review work and expertise without compromising anonymity. Reviewers should sign up for free so when they complete any reviews these can be instantly added to their profile in full compliance with journal review policies.


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Contact us

For all questions regarding the peer review process and how to become a reviewer, please contact the editorial office. Contact details can be found on the journal Contact page, which can be reached via the “About” menu bar on the journal home page.