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Peer Review Guidelines

1. What is the EIVX Peer Review Model?

Peer review is an essential part of the publication process and it ensures that EIVX maintains the highest quality standards for its published papers. All manuscripts submitted to our journals are strictly and thoroughly peer-reviewed by experts.

 

EIVX operates a single-blind model during the review process. This means the authors' identities are known to reviewers.


2. Reviewers' Responsibilities

Reviewers are the crucial facilitator between the author and the in-house editor. From a position of expertise, reviewers guide and enable fellow researchers to get their work out into the world, in the best condition it can be.

 

Every reviewer is expected to perform manuscript evaluation in a timely, transparent, and ethical manner, following the COPE guidelines. Reviewers who accept to review a manuscript are expected to:

l   Have the necessary expertise to judge the scientific quality of the manuscript;

l   Provide quality review reports and remain responsive throughout the peer review process;

l   Maintain standards of professionalism and ethics.


3. Guidelines for Reviewers

3.1. Invitation to Review

We ask invited reviewers to:

accept or decline any invitations as soon as possible (based on the manuscript title and abstract);

suggest alternative reviewers if an invitation must be declined;

request a deadline extension as soon as possible in case more time is required to provide a comprehensive report.

 

3.2. Potential Conflicts of Interest

We ask reviewers to declare any potential conflicts of interest and email the journal Editorial Office if they are unsure if something constitutes a potential conflict of interest. Possible conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to):

l   Reviewer works in the same institute as one of the authors;

l   Reviewer is a co-author, collaborator, joint grant holder, or has any other academic link, with any of the authors within the past three years;

l   Reviewer has a close personal relationship, rivalry or antipathy to any of the authors;

l   Reviewer may in any way gain or lose financially from publication of the paper;

l   Reviewer has any other non-financial conflicts of interest (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other) with any of the authors.

l   Reviewers should disclose any conflicts of interest that may be perceived as bias for or against the paper or authors.


Please kindly note that if reviewers are asked to assess a manuscript they previously reviewed for another journal, this is not considered to be a conflict of interest. In this case, reviewers should feel free to let the Editorial Office know if the manuscript has been improved or not compared to the previous version.


Reviewers are also recommended to read the relevant descriptions at: https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers.


3.3. Declaration of Confidentiality

Until the article is published, reviewers should keep the content of the manuscript, including the Abstract, confidential. Reviewers should also be careful not to reveal their identity to the authors, either in their comments or in metadata for reports submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF format.

 

3.4. Review Reports

Review reports should contain the following:

l   A brief summary (one short paragraph) outlining the aim of the paper, its main contributions and strengths.


l   General concept comments

Article: highlighting areas of weakness, the testability of the hypothesis, methodological inaccuracies, missing controls, etc.

Review: commenting on the completeness of the review topic covered, the relevance of the review topic, the gap in knowledge identified, the appropriateness of references, etc.


These comments are focused on the scientific content of the manuscript and should be specific enough for the authors to be able to respond.


l  Specific comments referring to line numbers, tables or figures that point out inaccuracies within the text or sentences that are unclear. These comments should also focus on the scientific content and not on spelling, formatting or English language problems, as these can be addressed at a later stage by our internal staff.

 

3.5. Overall Recommendation


Please provide an overall recommendation for the next processing stage of the manuscript as follows:


l   Accept in Present Form:

The paper can be accepted without any further changes.

l   Accept after Minor Revisions:

The paper can in principle be accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.

l   Reconsider after Major Revisions:

The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is normally provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within ten days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. If the required revision time is estimated to be longer than 2 months, we will recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting so as to avoid unnecessary time pressure and to ensure that all manuscripts are sufficiently revised.

l   Reject:

The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and the paper may be rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal.


Note that your recommendation is visible only to journal editors, not to the authors. Decisions on revisions, acceptance, or rejections must always be well justified.