Guidelines and Resources for Manuscript Peer Review

Your review will help the editor decide whether or not to publish the article, and help the author improve their manuscript.

There may be a formal report format to follow or instructions for how to structure your feedback. If not, below are some questions to answer and general tips on what to include if no guidelines are available.

• Briefly summarize the manuscript - what is the paper about and what are the findings.
  • Try to put the findings in context with the existing literature
• Provide your overall impressions of the article.
  • Consider the importance and significance of the research
  • Consider what it adds to the existing knowledge base
• Number your comments or use clearly-defined paragraphs to make it easy for the editor and author to follow your notes.
• Give positive feedback first.
• Be objective, specific, and constructive.
  • Provide clear and detailed comments to the editor.
  • Give constructive comments to the author(s) to help them with revisions.

Sample questions to consider:

• Are there major flaws or factual errors in the manuscript?
• Are there issues with the presentation of the data? Are figures & tables, language, and manuscript structure clear?
• Are there any ethical issues?
• Is the evidence presented strong enough to prove the author(s) conclusions?
• Is the methodology reproducible?
• Does the manuscript conform to the journal-specific instructions?