Journal Review Guidelines

Five major questions that are central to

the research review process:

1. What do the researchers want to find out?

2. Why is that important to investigate or understand?
3. How are the researchers investigating this? Are their
research methods appropriate and adequate to the task?
4. What do they claim to have found out? Are the findings
clearly stated?
5. How does this advance knowledge in the field? How
well do the researchers place their findings within the
context of ongoing scholarly inquiry about this topic?
What the journal tells you
•  The ideal review will be fair, unbiased, speedy,
and confidential. The ideal reviewer will
approach the paper in terms of questions such
as: "Is the science good?" and "Is it
understandable?" or "What is needed to make
it clear?" rather than "What are all the little
things that annoy me in style or
presentation?"
 1.1 Ethics
• Volunteer reviewers and editorial board
members are asked to decline from reviewing
papers of any authors with whom there is a
possibility or appearance of a conflict of
interest.
• Reviewers must attempt to be impartial when evaluating a
manuscript. Although it is difficult to be completely objective
when assessing a paper that may not coincide with one's own
beliefs or values, nevertheless, a reviewer must always strive for
that goal. If a reviewer cannot separate the evaluation process
from a desire to advocate a preferred theory or to reject the
manuscript out-of-hand on philosophical grounds, then the
reviewer should disqualify himself or herself from that review.
• Do not allow the manuscript to be reproduced while in your
custody. You must not use the manuscript for your personal
advantage in any way. You cannot cite it or use its contents in
any way until/unless it is published. If it is not published but you
wish to use it, you need to contact the author (e.g. via the editor
if the journal uses double-blind reviewing).
 1.2 Abstract

• Abstracts accompany articles in most journals, and

they are often republished as printed in secondary
abstracting services and journals.
• The abstract, therefore, should meet two
requirements;
a) A reader should be able to tell readily the value of
the article and whether or not to read it completely.
b) It also should provide the literature searcher with
enough information to assess its value and to index it
for later retrieval.
 According to the Agronomy Journal, the abstract
should:
• Strive for an impersonal, non-critical, and informative account.
• Give a clear, grammatically accurate, exact, and stylistically uniform treatment of the
subject.
• Provide rationale or justification for the study. The statement should give a brief
account of the purpose, need, and significance of the investigation (hypothesis or how
the present work differs from previous work).
• State the objectives clearly as to what is to be obtained.
• Give a brief account of the methods, emphasizing departures from the customary. Be
specific.
• State key results succinctly.
• Outline conclusions or recommendations. An emphasis of the significance of the work,
conclusions, and recommendations. This may include new theories, interpretations,
evaluations, or applications.
• Be quantitative and avoid the use of general terms, especially in presenting the method
and reporting the results. For example, if two rates of a treatment are used, state what
they are.
• Never cite references.
• Contain about 200 to 250 words.
Different journals specify different lengths for their
abstracts. Some are not long enough to do all of the
points listed above. If cutting aspects out, look at
dropping methods, reducing objectives to a minimum,
and limiting results and conclusions to absolute
highlights. 
 1.3 Manuscript General Content
• Across all the review rounds, reviewers should strive to
distinguish between what is perceived as correctable versus
uncorrectable problems and between major versus minor
concerns.
• The first round of reviews is the time for reviewers to highlight
uncorrectable problems or other major concerns about a paper.
It is generally inappropriate to raise them in later review rounds
if they already existed in the first draft submitted.
• In most cases, new uncorrectable problems or new major
concerns raised in later reviews should only apply to changes in
a paper that have emerged through the authors' revision work.
 1.4 Quality of Writing
• Clarity is vitally important. Whether or not you are an expert in the
subject discussed, you should understand the paper's content. Read
each paragraph carefully. Is there likely to be confusion? If so, request
that the author clarify. If you have some suggested revisions, these are
usually appreciated by authors, but please don't feel obliged to rewrite
the manuscript.
• Do the paragraphs flow smoothly? Is the manuscript readable? Can
you make suggestions for improvement? (Suggest using active voice.)
• Is there unnecessary repetition? Can you suggest deletion of sentences
or phrases or words that add little to the paper?
• Are enough examples provided to assist readers in relating to the
author' s ideas? Can you suggest some examples that the author might
want to include in his or her revision?
• What parts of the manuscript do you really like? Let the author(s)
know.
 1.5 Remember...
• Reviewers should not attempt to rewrite a
poorly written manuscript.
• Reviewers will remain anonymous.
• Prompt attention to manuscripts will be
appreciated both by the authors and by the
Editors.
The writing style is important. Consider the three guidelines for
successful communication--to be clear, concise, and correct---
and whether the authors have achieved it:
1. Is the writing clear? Do the authors communicate their ideas using direct,
straightforward, and unambiguous words and phrases? Have they
avoided jargon (statistical or conceptual) that would interfere with the
communication of their procedures or ideas?
2. Is the writing concise? Are too many words or paragraphs or sections
used to present what could be communicated more simply?
3. Is the writing correct? Too may promising scientists have only a
rudimentary grasp of grammar and punctuation that result in meandering
commas, clauses in complex sentences that are struggling to find their
verbs, and adjectives or even nouns that remain quite ambiguous about
their antecedents in the sentence. These are not merely technical issues
of grammar to be somehow dealt with by a copy-editor down the line.
Rather they involve the successful communication of a set of ideas to an
audience; and this is the basis of scholarship today.
 Good Reviews and Bad Reviews
• A good review is supportive, constructive, thoughtful,
and fair. It identifies both strengths and weaknesses,
and offers concrete suggestions for improvements. It
acknowledges the reviewer's biases where
appropriate, and justifies the reviewer's conclusions.
• A bad review is superficial, nasty, petty, self- serving,
or arrogant. It indulges the reviewer's biases with no
justification. It focuses exclusively
on weaknesses and offers no specific suggestions for
improvement.
 1.6 What you provide to the editor
• 1. A brief letter addressed to the editor (not for the author’s eyes)
with a specific recommendation. Different journals have slight
variations in the list of possible recommendations. They are likely
to be similar to the following options:
• Accept unconditionally. This rarely used category should be
reserved for manuscripts that are virtually flawless in their
content. In general, when a reviewer makes this recommendation,
he or she will be regarded as having signed off on the manuscript.
• Accept conditionally, subject to minor revisions, according to
accompanying comments. This recommendation should be made
when the manuscript is judged to be quite strong and in need of
only minor additions, deletions, or corrections. It does not need to
be reviewed again, in your view. The editor can judge whether
revisions have been made adequately.
• 2. Separate comments to the author. Please
ensure that comments are detailed and clear and
that they are constructive in nature, even if you
are recommending that the paper be rejected.
Make suggestions about length, organization,
tables, figures and references. Number all
comments, to make it easy for the author to refer
to them in correspondence with the editor.
•  A quality review should note the strengths as well
as the weaknesses of the manuscript. Authors
need to know what they have done well and not
just what they have done poorly.
 2. What the journals don’t tell you
2.1 A suggested strategy
• Work from a printed copy. This makes it easier to
make notes on it as you go, and to read it in places
where you would not take a computer.
• If the decision is really obvious and you are
confident about your ability to judge the paper,
you could write your review immediately after
your first reading. Otherwise, leave it a few days or
a week and come back to it. Read it again, or read
problem sections again, and then write your
review.
• If you are not going to reject the paper, obtain
a copy of a recent issue of the journal, or a
paper from a recent issue, to check on
formatting of headings, tables, figures,
references. Note any problems in these areas
in your review. You might also check the
journal’s instructions to authors at that stage,
although rarely find that useful.
• Write the manuscript reference number and
title at the top of your review.
• Always number your comments. If you have multiple
related comments, number them separately. This
allows the editor and the authors to easily refer to
your comments in further correspondence.
• Start by saying something positive about the paper,
no matter how difficult this is. Say as many positive
things as the paper deserves (or one more than that
if it doesn’t deserve any) before you get into
criticisms.
• Some reviewers provide an overview of the paper.
There is no need to do this. The editor will read the
paper too and the authors already know what’s in it!
• Next, note any concerns or problems at the big picture level.
e.g. relating to the overall approach, the statistical methods,
the interpretation of results, the quality of presentation or
writing.
• Then, start presenting specific comments on the paper. Note
the page number and the line number for each comment if
possible. Start with most important or serious of the specific
comments, and then include any minor issues.
• There is no need to write a conclusion to your review.
• If you have cited any literature, provide complete reference
details.
• At the end of a review, write “End.” on a line by itself to
make it clear that there is no further information and no lost
pages.