Reviewer Guidelines
Please make sure that the article you have been asked to review falls within your field of expertise.
Review Round Due Date
Reply to the invitation to review as soon as possible. Decide if you can review the manuscript in the allotted time. If you cannot meet the review round due date, then declining the invitation is recommended. However, a request for an extension of due date can be made by email to nurr@kenzpub.com.
Competing Interests
A competing interest will not necessarily eliminate you from reviewing a manuscript. Possible conflicts include: working in the same institution as one of the authors; having coauthored a paper with an author, particularly if it has been recent; or having a financial connection to the manuscript or any fund resources. These should be revealed when responding to the editor's invitation for review.
Confidentiality
- You must keep the contents of the manuscript and your review confidential.
- Even if you do not review that manuscript, you must keep any knowledge of it confidential.
- You must not act on the contents of the manuscript until it has been published.
- Please do not contact the author about the manuscript.
- Please avoid adding any personal information that may reveal your identity to authors, along with your review report.
- Please do not comment on the manuscript itself, as this will reveal your identity to the authors.
- Destroy the article after the review.
- If you need more information, please contact the editorial office at nurr@kenzpub.com.
Ethical Issues
In our publication ethics page, a list of possible problems (plagiarism, duplicate submission, etc.) with manuscripts are given. If you come across any of these issues, please share them with the editorial office at nurr@kenzpub.com. Various groups and journals have developed websites to help in handling ethics in publications (e.g., see COPE: http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).
In your review report, please state if there are any issues with the ethical treatment of animal or human subjects and whether or not the authors referred to them and used an appropriate guidelines in their procedures.
Points to Consider
Here are a number of questions you can use to evaluate a manuscript and address in your review report.
- Please justify your comments with explanations.
- Does the submission make an original contribution to the field?
- Does the submitted manuscript make an important contribution to the filed? Where would you rank it in terms of its importance?
- Is the Abstract structured and clear?
- Is the Introduction clear? Sets the stage and gives a rationale for the study.
- Are the methods complete? Is the information needed to reproduce the study given?
- Is there an appropriate informed consent (human experiments) with documentation that a human or animal protection committee reviewed the protocol prior to the initiation of the study?
- Are the results in tables, figures, and legends clear and easily understood?
- Are the statistical tests applied appropriate? Enlist the help of a biostatistician if you are unsure.
- Are the conclusions supported by the results? Is there unfounded speculation?
- Is the manuscript up to the journal’s standards of excellence?
- Does the format of the manuscript follow the author’s guidelines of the journal? For example, does it have a competing interest's statement?
- Are the grammar and language appropriate or need improvement?
- Are the references correct and inclusive?
- Do you see any evidence of ethical issues?
Reporting Guidelines
KenzPub does not mandate the use of reporting guidelines by reviewers; however, we encourage reviewers to use relevant reporting guidelines to help assess the submission. The EQUATOR Network and FAIRsharing list clinical and general science guidelines, respectively. We particularly encourage the use of:
- CONSORT for randomized controlled trials
- TREND for non-randomized trials
- PRISMA for systematic review and meta-analyses
- CARE for case reports
- STROBE for observational studies
- STREGA for genetic association studies
- SRQR for qualitative studies
- STARD for diagnostic accuracy studies
- ARRIVE for animal experiments
Submit your Report
The standard recommendations are:
- Accept unaltered
- Accept after minor changes
- Accept after major changes
- Reject
Add the written evaluation that addresses the questions above after selecting the desired recommendation.