Last updated: October 1, 2024
Guidelines for manuscript review by registered Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers
0 Introduction
To standardize the manuscript peer-review activity of Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers, Baishideng Publishing Group (Baishideng) has adopted a registration system for Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers to ensure that only credible, high-quality studies will be published. Peer review is the process by which an academic manuscript is reviewed by experts in the relevant field, i.e. external reviewers whose service is performed before a decision is made on whether to publish the manuscript or not. All Baishideng journals use the single-blind peer review model, and all manuscripts submitted to Baishideng journals will pass strict external peer review before they can be published. In particular, manuscripts authored by Baishideng editorial staffs/editors cannot be processed by the editorial staff members/editors themselves, but have to be processed by other editorial staff members/editors and undergo external peer review before they can be published.
Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers stay informed about the latest developments and cutting-edge research in their field while reviewing manuscripts for potential publication. In that vein, their peer review activities enable them to contribute to the growth of substantive literature directly, driving the field toward further innovations and new directions. Each peer-review report, completed by Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers, plays a key role in the journal editor's initial decision regarding the manuscript. Technically, these reports are crucial in guiding authors to revise their work, enhancing its overall academic quality and potential impact on the field.
To acknowledge the valuable wisdom and time Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers contribute, we offer a conditional review fee based on the authors' rating of the peer-review report's quality on a 5-star scale. The Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers can choose whether to accept the conditional review fee for their peer review activity during registration. This initiative represents a new, professional commercial peer-review model.
1 Requirements for registration by Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers
1.1 Criteria for registration by Editorial Board Members: Professional status as Assistant Professor or Associate Professor or above; academically active scholar in the field; a good record of publications and citations, especially in the past 5 years, which is suggestive of ongoing and progressive academic activities; and willingness to conduct manuscript peer review.
1.2 Criteria for registration by Peer Reviewers: Educational status of MD or PhD in basic or clinical medicine; and willingness to conduct manuscript peer review.
2 Rules for manuscript review
2.1 Academic integrity of Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers: Academic integrity comprises the following 7 aspects.
2.1.1 Conflict of interest. Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers will have no conflict of interest with any author of the manuscript that they are invited to review, will come from institutions that are different from those of the authors, and will not have published articles as a co-author of any author of the manuscript; if there is any conflict of interest, the Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers should immediately decline the invitation for review.
2.1.2 Confidentiality. Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers shall not share any content of the reviewed manuscript with others outside the review process. They shall not publish the content of the unpublished manuscript or research results without written authorization from the publisher.
2.1.3 Appropriation of manuscript content. Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers shall not, without the permission of the manuscript’s authors and editors, use the content of unpublished manuscripts they have reviewed for purposes unrelated to the review process.
2.1.4 Seeking improper benefits. Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers shall not use confidential information in the review process to obtain personal or professional benefits. They shall not use review rights to seek improper benefits.
2.1.5 Policy on artificial intelligence (AI) usage. Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are prohibited from using AI tools, such as but not limited to ChatGPT, to write manuscript peer-review reports. However, Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are allowed to use AI tools to check and correct their English grammar and other non-content-related errors (spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc.) in their manuscript peer-review reports, and to test the duplication rate of manuscripts to find potential academic misconduct such as plagiarism and duplicated publication.
2.1.6 Reviewers' professional conduct. Reviewers are expected to maintain professional conduct by focusing solely on the content of the submitted manuscript. They should avoid commenting on the authors themselves and refrain from using scolding, humiliating, sarcastic, or disparaging language.
2.1.7 Recommended relevant citations. Reviewers generally shall not recommend authors cite articles of their own and/or their colleagues, and/or articles from journals associated with themselves. However, in cases where there are essential articles that the authors need to cite, the reviewer should provide a meticulously reasoned explanation for his/her recommendation of the specific article so that the authors can decide independently whether or not to cite the article.
2.2 Upholding academic integrity: To ensure the highest standards of academic integrity, authors are encouraged to avoid the following 10 potential pitfalls.
2.2.1 Plagiarism. This involves improperly stealing another’s views, data, images, research methods, and/or written expressions and publishing them in their own name.
2.2.2 Fabrication. This involves making up or fabricating data or facts.
2.2.3 Falsification. This involves the deliberate falsification of data or facts to make them untrue.
2.2.4 Duplicate submission. This involves submitting the same manuscript or multiple papers with only minor differences to two or more journals, or re-submitting them to another journal within an agreed period.
2.2.5 Overlapping publications. This involves the practice of overlapping published articles or parts of those articles by oneself (or any individual/subset of the authors) without being specified.
2.2.6 Violation of research ethics. This occurs when the research described in the manuscript has not obtained the required ethical approval, exceeded the scope of that approval, or breached established research ethics standards.
2.2.7 Reference mismatched citations. In this case, the references cited by the authors lack a clear connection to the manuscript's subject matter. Alternatively, significant relevant research may have been omitted, or the manuscript may include excessive citations of unrelated articles authored by the same researchers.
2.2.8 Image citation. This involves the unauthorized use of images from published articles without copyright permission or without citing the source of the images.
2.2.9 Qualification and expertise. An author should have sufficient knowledge and expertise in the particular area of research, which should be proven by their valid affiliations for a specific discipline or division of a research or academic institution.
2.2.10 Intellectual contribution. Authorship can only be designated for individuals who contributed intellectually and meaningfully, not just by paying publication fees and/or research costs and/or by allowing use of a research facility, etc., as those contributions are not considered intellectual or academically meaningful.
2.3 Responsibilities of reviewers: The primary responsibilities of Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers in reviewing a manuscript are to evaluate the manuscript’s unique academic contribution, novelty, innovation, importance, and flaws, to give comments and suggestions for rejection or revision of the manuscript, and to detect academic misconduct. If an Editorial Board Member or Peer Reviewer cannot comment in-depth on a manuscript, their report will be of no value to the authors and journal editors.
2.4 Manuscript rejection: Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers should explain the reasons and grounds for recommending rejection of the manuscript.
2.5 Manuscript revision: Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers should give detailed comments and suggestions to the authors on how to revise the manuscript.
2.6 Language used in manuscript review: The peer-review report should be written in English, and usually ranges between 300 and 1000 words, with rigorous and specific comments.
2.7 Qualification of reviewers: As experts in the field relevant to the manuscript, Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers should initially judge for themselves the accuracy and relevance of the manuscript’s main title, abstract, core tips, and keywords. If they are satisfied with such, it will be appropriate for them to accept the invitation to review.
2.8 Duration of peer review: Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers should decide to accept or decline the invitation within 7 days. If they accept the invitation to review, the review should be performed within 14 days normally, though they may opt for an extension of 21 or 28 days if needed. If the peer-review report cannot be submitted in due time, the Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers should notify the editorial office promptly.
2.9 Aim and scope of the Journal: Please click on the Journal name to go to the Journal home page and open ‘About the Journal’ to view the aim and scope of the Journal.
2.10 Number of reviewers for each manuscript: The number of reviewers for each manuscript is based on the type of manuscript. We usually make the first decision on each manuscript based on 1-3 reviewers' reports for Reviews, Editorials, and Letters to the Editor. For Original Research manuscripts, we make the first decision on each manuscript based on the reports of 2-3 reviewers. Our policy is to accept a maximum of 3 Peer Reviewers per manuscript. If Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are interested in the research content of a manuscript after reading the title, abstract, and keywords, they should click the ‘Accept’ button immediately. If they are not interested, they should click the ‘Decline’ button immediately.
2.11 Recommended reviewers: We do not accept recommended reviewers, from either the paper’s authors or its Peer Reviewers. Our policy is using Peer Reviewers registered in our system, as they have passed objective vetting and help us to adhere to ethical standards.
2.12 Unqualified peer-review report: If the quality of the peer-review report does not meet the guidelines for manuscript review requirements, the review will be considered invalid, and the peer-review report will be discarded.
3 Benefits of peer review
In order to thank the Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers of the journals published by Baishideng for their outstanding contributions to manuscript review, Baishideng is willing to provide them with the following rewards.
3.1 Showcasing personal academic achievements on Find a Scholar in Reference Citation Analysis (RCA): Find a Scholar is a scholar evaluation and presentation platform developed by Baishideng that resides within its RCA database, providing multi-dimensional citation data analysis of scholars' published research results and helping scholars to enhance their academic influence. In the meantime, Find a Scholar is one of the most important platforms to communicate with other scholars by displaying their personal research domain, research keywords, biography, total views, total articles, total citations, article influence index metric, academic achievements, academic activity, academic circle of friends, and social media URLs. Find a Scholar has accepted more than 4027 scholars from more than 100 countries across multiple disciplines. Please visit Find a Scholar at https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com/searchscholar.
3.2 Writing editorials or letters to the editor: The Editorial Office will notify the Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers immediately after the final acceptance of each manuscript for publication, and invite them to write editorials or letters to the editor for them.
3.3 Being a “cover figure”: The Editorial Office will invite Editorial Board Members or Peer Reviewers with outstanding contributions to be visually represented as the cover figure of the journal’s issue in order to expand their academic influence.
3.4 Consideration for the “Distinguished Review Contribution Award”: Registered Editorial Board and Peer Reviewers are allowed to participate in the consideration for “Distinguished Review Contribution Award”. The consideration process involves the author's rating of the specific reviewer’s review quality according to a 5-star scale, the number of manuscripts reviewed by the specific reviewer, and durations of their review turnarounds. Those reviewers awarded the “Distinguished Review Contribution Award” will receive a monetary bonus and formal certificate.
3.5 Conditional payment of initial and second review fees to registered Journal’s Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors: From September 23, 2024, the publisher will pay review fees for unsolicited and ultimately published manuscripts. The initial and second review for unsolicited and ultimately rejected manuscripts is voluntary, and the publisher will not pay review fees for such manuscripts. The amount of the review fee is 20 USD per manuscript for initial review, and 80 USD per manuscript for second review. The initial and second review for invited editorials, reviews, and letters to the editor is voluntary, and the publisher will not pay review fees for such manuscripts.
3.6 Conditional payment of review fees for registered Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers: From July 22, 2024, the publisher will pay review fees for unsolicited and ultimately published manuscripts. The peer review for unsolicited and ultimately rejected manuscripts is voluntary, and the publisher will not pay review fees for such manuscripts. The amount of the review fee is determined by the author's rating of the review’s quality using a 5-star scale. 10 USD will be paid for each star, with the maximum number of stars being 5. The peer review for invited editorials, reviews, and letters to the editor is voluntary, and the publisher will not pay review fees for such manuscripts.
3.7 Enjoying a discounted fee for publication of personal papers: A ~50% discount of the manuscript publication fee will be provided to registered Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers who are the first or corresponding author of a paper submitted to the journal for which they are registered, upon the paper’s final acceptance after passing peer review. This discount of the manuscript publication fee is not applicable to other Baishideng journals for which they are not registered.
4 Key points and criteria for manuscript review
4.1 Title: Is the most important and compelling information included in the title?
4.2 Authors: Are the first author(s) and the corresponding author(s) leaders or active in the field?
4.3 Institution: Is the corresponding author's institution an important or recognized research institution or laboratory in the field?
4.4 Abstract: Does the content highlight the importance of the manuscript’s topic to the field, the purpose of the research, the uniqueness of the method, and the novelty, significance, and impact of the results?
4.5 Key Words: Do the keywords express the characteristic elements and fully reflect the central content of the manuscript?
4.6 Introduction: Does the Introduction describe the consensus and theory on the topic, explain any current unknown issues or questions about the topic, propose critical issues that need to be addressed, and state the purpose of the study?
4.7 Materials and Methods/Experimental Procedure: Is the novelty of the new method, new technique, or algorithm described in detail? Is each step of the experiment described in detail so that readers can repeat the experiment? Do the authors state that an ethics committee has approved the experiment? Is statistical probability analysis clearly stated?
4.8 Results: Are the results presented new and understandable to readers? Can the results be reproduced and are they directly related to the methods described? Did the authors discover a new method that improves on an existing one? Are the pictures and illustrations in the manuscript sufficiently self-explanatory? Does the manuscript display the data correctly? Is the manuscript easy to interpret and understand? Are the statistics and interpretation of the data appropriate and consistent throughout the manuscript? Are the figures and tables numbered in order of appearance in the manuscript? Are the tables three-line* ones? *Three-line tables include table numbers, table titles, table heads, table bodies, and table footnotes. Do pictures* of the same theme use a single theme, and are the annotations for each picture stated separately? *Pictures and line drawings generally consist of pictures/drawings, picture/drawing numbers, picture/drawing titles, and picture/drawing notes.
4.9 Discussion: Does the Discussion adequately explain the results? Compared with other studies, what problems should have been solved in the study? Are the results of the study compared with those of previous studies? Are discoveries, methods, and techniques as well as the implications of the findings discussed? Are the limitations of the study acknowledged and discussed?
4.10 Conclusion: Is the comprehensive manuscript writing, from the Title to the Conclusion, logical and coherent? Is the hypothesis of the study valid? Do the results of the study support the conclusion? Is the most significant finding of the study expressed clearly? Are the methods of the study adequately expressed so that they could be repeated? Are the implications of the study for the future expressed?
4.11 Acknowledgments: Acknowledgments should be expressed to institutions or individuals who have contributed to, supported, or helped with the study. The name of any commercial company is not allowed to be present in this section.
4.12 References: Are the references of the manuscript consistent with the subject of the manuscript? Does the manuscript include references to important relevant articles published within the last 3-10 years? Are important references missing from the manuscript’s reference list? Do the authors cite their own published articles that are irrelevant to the subject of the manuscript? Are references sequentially cited in the text?
4.13 Abbreviations: Are abbreviations used correctly in the manuscript? Standard abbreviations should be defined in the Abstract, Core Tip, and main body of the manuscript upon first mention in the text. Certain commonly used abbreviations, such as DNA, RNA, HIV, LD50, PCR, HBV, ECG, WBC, RBC, CT, ESR, CSF, IgG, ELISA, PBS, ATP, EDTA, and mAb, do not need to be defined and can be used directly.
4.14 Language: Are there a large number of spelling errors, grammatical errors, tense errors, singular and plural errors, punctuation errors, or terminology errors in the manuscript?
4.15 Manuscript type: Is the content of the manuscript consistent with the type of the manuscript? Manuscript types include Editorial, Review, Frontier, Field of Vision, Minireview, Letter To The Editor, Correction, Retraction Note, Basic Study, Retrospective Study, Clinical Practice Study, Case Control Study, Observational Study, Retrospective Cohort Study, Clinical Trials Study, Prospective Study, Randomized Controlled Trial, Randomized Clinical Trial, Evidence-Based Medicine, Scientometrics, Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Case Report.
4.16 Scientific research ethics: Was the study approved by an institutional ethics committee? If the study is a scientific and technological activity involving humans, including tests, surveys, and observational studies involving the use of human genes, human embryos, human biological samples, personal information, etc., it must be approved by an institutional ethics committee, and a reference number for such should be cited. If the study is a scientific and technological activity involving animals, it must be approved by an institutional ethics committee or an institutional animal ethics committee.
5 Criteria for peer review of Correction and Retraction Note manuscripts
A Correction manuscript is a formally published statement that corrects important errors, such as inaccurate or inappropriate statements or documents, as discovered by the author, reader, or editor after the article has been published. A Retraction Note manuscript is a formally published statement by the editorial office or author announcing a retraction decision made by the Editorial Board following an investigation of a published article and citing the underlying reasons, or a retraction decision made by the author of a published article and citing the underlying reasons. In general, these two types of manuscripts do not need to be sent for peer review to check their scientific quality and are published after internal verification by the editorial office. If there is a special Correction manuscript that involves changes to important scientific issues related to the published article, such as results, conclusions, and images, it will be sent to peer reviewers for review.
6 Writing the peer-review report
Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers apply their knowledge and experience as experts in the field to review manuscripts for their originality, scientificity, completeness, readability, future development, weaknesses, and research ethics. This policy plays a crucial role in further improving the academic quality of manuscripts and leading the development direction of the discipline. Editorial Board Members’ and Peer Reviewers’ comments on a manuscript and recommendations for its acceptance, submission to other journals, or rejection are the constructive framework for the editorial office's decision-making on the manuscript. When Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers write an in-depth and reasoned review report for a manuscript, it also serves a crucial role in helping the authors to further revise their manuscript, regardless of whether the manuscript will be finally accepted or rejected.
Before writing a peer-review report, Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are suggested to first think about the following questions: Why did the authors perform the work? What work was done? What are the most important findings? Why did the authors use the relevant method(s)? Why were the specific parameters used? What has been done before? What makes this work different?
Moreover, Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers should consider the following questions: (1) Do the authors have academic integrity problems according to the peer-review rules, priorities, and standards? (2) Does the manuscript topic fall within the scope of the journal? Is the manuscript structure clear and of good quality? (3) Does the quality of the picture(s) in the manuscript meet the requirements for publication? (4) Does the quality of the table(s) in the manuscript meet the requirements for publication? (5) Are the references consistent with or closely related to the subject of the manuscript? (6) Are the data and their analyses reliable? Can other researchers repeat the authors' experiments and reproduce their results? and (7) Will the manuscript’s content be of interest to readers? Are additional experiments needed for the study?
In addition, Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are recommended to comment on the manuscript's academic quality, originality, and importance, elaborate on its shortcomings, and point out errors or ambiguous sentences in the text, pictures, tables, references, etc.
In summary, these comments should focus on the manuscript's scientific content, be in-depth and supported by reason, and be specific enough to provide the authors with important academic reference value in revising their manuscript.