Reviewers guidelines

For the Reviewers

We do appreciate your contribution as reviewers through the peer review process in establishing and sustaining PoEM’s quality control system.

To support you with your crucial role, PoEM provides you with some guidelines and resources that you are kindly requested to review carefully, in order to carry out your work in the most efficient and effective way.

Guidelines for Reviewers

General rules:

  • Provide PoEM with accurate information concerning your field of expertise, work experience, publications, and valid and updated contact information.
  • Be familiar and follow PoEM’s author’s guidelines, COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers, ICMJE - Responsibilities in the Submission and Peer-Review Process, and WAME - Conflict of Interest in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals.
  • Ensure that the manuscript is within your area of expertise, and you can dedicate the appropriate time to conduct an efficient and effective review before accepting the assignment.
  • For first time peer reviewer with PoEM, your work will be evaluated by the Editor. If the evaluation’s result is satisfactory, your name will be added to our reviewers list, and you will be assigned more reviews.
  • You act as an advisor to the journal. Thus, your review should be more than a simple "accept" or "reject".

Conflict of interest

We kindly ask you to reveal if you have a divergence between your individual’s interests and your responsibility toward your role as reviewer, that may bias your evaluation of a manuscript. In such case, you should rescue yourself from the peer-review process.

Confidentiality

  • Treat the reviewed manuscript as confidential in its entirety, during and after the review process.
  • If you feel that there is a need to solicit someone’s input in the review process, you are welcome to do so after an explicit permission from the Editor. Besides, you have to acknowledge the concerned person’s contribution with his/her name and affiliation in your comments to the Editor. Concerned individuals as well, must maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript as outlined in this section.
  • When clarifications/information from the author are deemed necessary, you should include that in your comments section or your report.
  • You should destroy copies of the manuscript after the review process; they should not be retained for your personal use.
  • You should not agree to review a manuscript just to gain sight of it with no intention of submitting a review report.
  • If you have previously reviewed a version of the manuscript for another journal, you will not be precluded from reviewing it, however, you should mention this in your comments to the Editor.

Fairness and objectivity

You are deemed to conduct an objective review, with a focus on the originality of the manuscript, its relevance to the field, clarity of the content, and the author’s abidance by PoEM’s author’s guidelines, and publication ethics.

Accompany your recommendation to accept, reject, or ask for minor or major corrections with constructive and accurate comments to back your decision, with the aim of improving the author’s work. Try to be helpful and always respectful to the author.

If needed, you will be asked to participate in the editing of your review report before sending it to the author. If you decline to edit the unacceptable portions of your review, the editor will proceed with the required editing in terms of the tone and language without changing your opinion or recommendations.

Reviewers who repetitively submit reviews with hostile or inappropriate comments will be removed from PoEM’s reviewer pool.

Timeliness

It is crucial that you respond to our invitation to peer-review, and to submit your review report within your deadline. When you feel unable to submit your report by the deadline, you should immediately notify the Editor.

 

And what if all the above is respected?

In addition to the complacency feeling for having supported the author and your career advancement as well, and contributed in upholding the high standards of scholarly communication and in maintaining our journal quality, you may be selected as PoEM’s “Reviewer of the Quarter” (ROQ)!

Reviewers whose performance reflects the guidelines followed by PoEM, responsibility, accountability, and professionalism, will be recognized by PoEM with the “Reviewer of the Quarter” certificate. For this aim, PoEM established a criteria checklist based on which a specific PoEM’s committee will choose the reviewer to be awarded.

Moreover, you can add the reviews you do for PoEM to your Publons’ profile to track and showcase your peer review activities. You get credit even if your reviews are anonymous and the manuscript is never published. To facilitate this process, PoEM will send you a “Thank you for reviewing” email that you can use in your communication (reviews@publons.com),  to facilitate the verification process.