Peer Review
Peer review process
Peer review plays an essential role in ensuring that journal publishes credible work. This benefits the entire academic community. The revisions and improvement of your work are part of the publication process and actually help raise the quality of your manuscript. Peer reviewers are experts who volunteer their time to help improve the journal manuscripts they review. They offer authors free advice.
Through the peer review process, manuscripts should become:
- More robust
- Easier to read
- More useful
In terms of rejection
Your journal manuscript can be rejected if it:
- Lacks proper structure
- Lacks the necessary detail for readers to fully understand the authors’ analysis
- Lacks up-to-date references
- Contains theories, concepts, or conclusions that are not fully supported by its data, arguments, and information
- Does not provide enough details about materials and methods to allow other scientists to repeat the experiment
- Lacks clear descriptions or explanations of:
– Hypotheses tested
– The experimental design
– Sample characteristics and descriptive statistics
- Has a weak study design or faulty statistical analysis
- Has poor language quality
Revising
When revising your manuscript and responding to peer review comments:
- Address all points raised by the editor and reviewers
- Clearly show the major revisions in the text, either with a different color text, by highlighting the changes, or with Microsoft Word’s Track Changes feature
- Perform any additional experiments or analyses the reviewers recommend (unless you feel that they would not make your paper better; if this is the case, explain why in your response letter)
- Differentiate between reviewer comments and your responses in your letter
- Provide a polite and scientific rebuttal to any points or comments you disagree with
- Describe the revisions to your manuscript in your response letter
- Return the revised manuscript and response letter within the time period the editor tells you