- Guidelines for Reviewers
All submissions to International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research journals are subject to double-blind peer-review. Double-blind reviewing protects the identity of the author and the reviewers by not disclosing their names.
Reviewers are advised to consider the following while managing the review.
Before reviewing an article, make sure that:
The article you are asked to review and evaluate lies within your area of expertise.
• You have time to complete the peer review process within 2 weeks. If more time is needed, you are supposed to inform the respective editors.
• You have no conflict of interest with the authors or the content of the article. In case there is, you must disclose these to the respective editors.
Below mentioned some guidelines will help you in your evaluation of the manuscript:
• Analyze the article based on the validity and quality of the content. The literature and presentation of the article should also be up to the journal’s policies and standards.
• The title should be suitably presenting the content of the article.
• Make sure that the abstract, introduction, methodology, results and conclusions have been adequately and appropriately dealt by the authors. The data present in the article should be relevant, accurate and clearly elaborated.
• Ensure that enough information is present for the study to be replicated.
• The data analysis should fully support the conclusion of the article. If they do not, the reviewers should explicitly ask for other required evidences and information.
• Special attention should be given to the type of data collected. The statistics and illustrations e.g., figures, graphs, pictures and tables etc. should be easily interpreted, authentic and reliable.
IMPORTANT POINTS TO CONSIDER:
Reviewers are required to essentially provide advice on the following points in their review reports:
• Is the manuscript written comprehensively yet sufficient to be understandable? If not, how could it be improved?
• Have adequate proofs been given for the declarations?
• Have the authors addressed the previous findings moderately?
• Does the paper offer enough details of its methodology to reflect the research?
• International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research supports authors to publish detailed protocols as supporting material online. Do any distinct techniques used in the manuscript warrant such a protocol?
Reviewers should be Aware of the Following:
The final decision, regarding publishing of the article is always taken by the editor.
Reviewers must provide detailed comments in their review form so that the authors can understand the reasons for either not accepting their article or sending it back for revision. Detailed comments also make it easier for the editor to take his/her final decision.
Reviewers should abstain from sharing details of the articles with the third parties and permission must be sought from the respective editors if an external referee’s expertise are required for reviewing process.
The reviewers should respect the given deadlines and they may be reminded by our publishing department about their time limit since a prompt review leads to a timely publication.
If the article is not ethically correct or plagiarism is detected, the reviewers should notify the editors immediately.
