Reviewer Guideline

Peer Review

At Scientific Forefront, we value the contribution of reviewers very much. Peer Review is the basis of scientific communication and publication and as a reviewer your service to the process of academic publication is invaluable.

Peer Review is a systematic process established by the scholarly publishing community to assess & improve the quality of the work by peers and thereby contributing to the quality of scientific knowledge available to scientific community.

Accepting a Review

The editors of the journal may approach a reviewer due to prior interest in reviewing manuscripts in specific areas of expertise or based on your prior research publications in the same area as the manuscript under consideration. Editors might also solicit expert reviews to assess specific areas of the manuscript based on review report submitted by other peer reviewers. We understand that the reviewers might be occupied, and it may not always be possible to accept to review. Under such circumstances, we highly appreciate if you could revert by declining to review. We are also open to suggestions for potential reviewers who might be available to review such a manuscript.

Responsibilities of a Reviewer

As a reviewer your recommend that you follow the peer review guidelines published by the Community on Publication Ethics (COPE).  It is essential to refer to the journal peer review model. In most cases, unless otherwise explicitly stated the process of reviewing is confidential.

Duration

Reviewing the manuscript will need careful consideration to the amount of time the review process will need. At Scientific Forefront we would like to receive your review report in about 14 days from the day of your acceptance to review. However, we understand you might need additional time in some rare cases. Kindly communicate such need for time to the editor, which will make us aware of your willingness to review.

If you may not be able to review after the acceptance, we highly appreciate if you could let us know as soon as possible.

Expertise

It might be possible that the subject matter of the manuscript is entirely outside of the reviewer expertise. This might be due to ambiguous terms in the title of the manuscript or in list of keywords that might have appeared to be in the same area of your expertise when you accepted to review the manuscript. However, after reading the manuscript, you find that it is beyond the scope of your interest or expertise. Under such conditions we request that the reviewer writes to the editor and decline to review the manuscript.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts shared during the review process is confidential, that is with the understanding that the manuscript will not be shared with anyone else without prior permission. This is critical for peer review process as it protects the research findings and innovations of the author. Under all circumstances, the manuscripts shall not be shared with anyone else without the prior permission of the editor. Kindly refer to our involving junior/senior researchers or colleagues and co-reviews section for more information.

Conflict of Interest

Careful consideration must be given before undertaking a manuscript for peer review for conflict of interest. Manuscripts submitted by authors with whom the reviewer has previously worked, published, supervise or taught in the past should highlight such associations to the journal editor as soon possible. The journal editor may then review the case further.

Ethical Concerns

In the process of reviewing the manuscript, as a reviewer you may communicate your potential ethical concerns to the journal editor. Any such concerns that you may have as a reviewer should be discussed with the journal editor in confidentiality. Some of the examples of the ethical concerns are plagiarized/duplicated content, breach of best practices or ethical guidelines etc.

Involving junior/senior researcher or colleagues

In some cases, you might like to involve junior/senior or colleagues in the process of reviewing a manuscript. In such cases, please kindly communicate with the journal editor prior to involving others. If your request to involve others has been accepted by the editor, kindly include the names of the contributors in the “Confidential Comments to the Editor section”.  The final review report must be approved and submitted by the reviewer.

Co-reviews

In principle, Scientific Forefront also accepts co-reviews (review by more than one reviewer). In such cases, both the reviewers are considered to have equally contributed to the review report. The final review (a single review report) must be approved by both the reviewers.

Review Report

At Scientific Forefront, we encourage the authors to provide structured review. The peer review report template can be downloaded from here. The Editors may also include additional resources that are specific to each journal. The review template provides clear indications of the sections that are shared with authors and seen by editors

Reviewer Acknowledgements

We publish a list of reviewers who have contributed via peer review to the journals once in every 6 months in our journal acknowledgement section.

In addition to this, we are also happy to provide credits to reviewers based on individual requests. We are currently evaluating third-party partners that consolidate reviewing contributions for reviewers.

How to become a reviewer?

We very much welcome interest to become a reviewer for Scientific Forefront Journals. All potential reviewers can submit interest by filling in this application form. Once your application is received, we will add you to our reviewer database. The academic editors may then contact the reviewers based on the expertise required for the manuscript under consideration. It should be possible to also register an account in the Scientific Forefront and express your interest as reviewer.

 
Reviewer Form