Reviewers’ Guidelines
- Editors should provide guidance to reviewers on everything that is expected of them. This guidance should be regularly updated and should refer or link to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines.
- Reviews should be conducted objectively.
- Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.
- Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments and references as necessary and not be defamatory or libelous.
- Reviewers should decline to review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
- Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of material supplied to them and should not discuss unpublished manuscripts with colleagues or use the information in their own work.
- If a reviewer wants to pass a review request onto a colleague, they should get the editor’s permission beforehand.