Last updated: August 16, 2024
Peer-review process
0 Introduction
In order to standardize the manuscript peer-review (single-blind) activity of Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers of the 46 English-language journals owned by Baishideng Publishing Group (Baishideng), 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, before a decision is made on whether to publish the manuscript or not. All of Baishideng journals use the single-blind peer review model, and all manuscripts submitted to Baishideng journals must 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 staffs/editors themselves, but have to be processed by other editorial staffs/editors and undergo external peer review before they can be published.
Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers keep abreast of the latest developments and the most cutting-edge and innovative research findings in their field before the manuscript under their review is considered for publication. In that vein, their peer review activities will allow them to directly contribute to the growth of substantive literature that will push the field into further innovations and novel directions. Each peer-review report itself, completed by Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers, plays a key role in the first decision made by the journal editor regarding the manuscript. From a technical standpoint, it also plays a crucial role in helping authors to revise their manuscript so as to improve its overall academic quality and subsequent impact on the field.
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 3 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: The scope of academic integrity for Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers is comprised of the following 7 aspects.
(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 reject the invitation for review.
(2) Confidentiality. Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers shall not share any content of the reviewed manuscript with others outside the review process, and shall not publish the content of the unpublished manuscript or research results without authorization.
(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 that they have reviewed for purposes unrelated to the review process.
(4) Seeking improper benefits. Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers shall not use confidential information in the process of review to obtain personal or professional benefits, and shall not use review rights to seek improper benefits.
(5) ChatGPT: Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are not allowed to use artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, to write manuscript peer-review reports.
(6) Courtesy of reviewers. Reviewers are not allowed to comment on the authors themselves; reviewers should avoid using scolding, humiliating, sarcastic, and disparaging language.
(7) Recommended citations. Reviewers generally shall not recommend authors to cite articles of their own and/or their colleagues, and/or articles from journals associated with themselves. If there are really important articles that the authors need to cite, the reviewers should explain in itemized detail their reasoning for recommending the article for the authors' reference so the authors will be able to decide whether or not to cite the article.
2.2 Academic integrity of authors: Authors’ academic misconduct in violation of academic integrity involves the following 8 aspects.
(1) Plagiarism. This involves stealing another’s views, data, images, research methods, and/or written expressions by improper means and publishing them in his/her own name.
(2) Fabrication. The involves making up or fabricating data or facts.
(3) Falsification. This involves deliberate falsification of data or facts to make them untrue.
(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.
(5) Overlapping publications. This involves the practice of overlapping published articles or parts of those articles by oneself (or any one/subset of the authors) without being specified.
(6) Violation of research ethics. In this, the research involved in the manuscript has not obtained ethical approval as required, or has exceeded the scope of ethical approval, or has violated the norms of research ethics.
(7) Reference citations. In this, the references cited by the authors have no clear association with the subject content of the manuscript, or some important relevant research results are omitted (not cited), or a large number of irrelevant articles published by the authors themselves are cited in the manuscript.
(8) Image citation. This involves unauthorized use of images from published articles without copyright permission or without citing the source of the images.
2.3 Responsibilities of reviewers: The main 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 Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are not able to comment in depth on a manuscript of interest, such a peer-review report will be of no reference 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 ranges between 300 and 1000 words usually.
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 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 usually make the decision to accept or decline the invitation within 7 days. If they accept the invitation to review, the review should be performed within 14 days after they have accepted the invitation. Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers can also choose 14, 21, or 28 days as the duration of their peer review activity. If the peer-review report cannot be submitted in due time, the Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers should notify the editorial office in a timely manner.
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. For Reviews, Editorials, and Letters to the Editor, we usually make the first decision on each manuscript based on 1-3 reviewers' reports. 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 nor its peer reviewers. Our policy is to only use 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 requirements of the guidelines for manuscript review, the review will be considered invalid and the peer-review report will be closed.
3 Key points and criteria for manuscript review
3.1 Title: Is the most important and compelling information included in the title?
3.2 Authors: Are the first author(s) and the corresponding author(s) leaders or active in the field?
3.3 Institution: Is the corresponding author's institution an important or recognized research institution or laboratory in the field?
3.4 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?
3.5 Key Words: Do the keywords express the characteristic elements and fully reflect the central content of the manuscript?
3.6 Introduction: Does the Introduction describe the general consensus and theory on the topic, explain any current unknown issues or questions about the topic, propose key issues that need to be addressed, and state the purpose of the study?
3.7 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 authors state that the experiment has been approved by an ethics committee? Is statistical probability analysis clearly stated?
3.8 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 are generally composed of table number, table title, table head, table body, 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.
3.9 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 new discoveries, methods, and techniques as well as the implications of the findings discussed? Are the limitations of the study acknowledged and discussed?
3.10 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?
3.11 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.
3.12 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 3-5 years? Are important references missing from the manuscript’s references list? Do the authors cite their own published articles that are not relevant to the subject of the manuscript? Are references sequentially cited in the text?
3.13 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.
3.14 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?
3.15 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.
3.16 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. If the study is a scientific and technological activity involving animals, it needs to be approved by an institutional ethics committee or an institutional animal ethics committee.
4 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 scientific research ethics. This 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 greatly helpful in the editorial office's decision making on the manuscript. If Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers write an in-depth and reasoned review report for a manuscript, it will play a very important role in helping the authors to further revise the 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 relevant parameters used? What has been done before? What makes this work different?
Moreover, Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers should consider the following questions: Do the authors have academic integrity problems according to the peer-review rules, priorities, and standards? Does the manuscript topic fall within the scope of the journal? Is the manuscript structure clear and of good quality? Does the quality of picture(s) in the manuscript meet the requirements for publication? Does the quality of table(s) in the manuscript meet the requirements for publication? Are the references consistent with or closely related to the subject of the manuscript? Are the data and their analysis reliable? Can other researchers repeat the authors' experiments and reproduce their results? 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 academic quality, originality, and importance of the manuscript, 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 scientific content of the manuscript, be in-depth and supported by reason, and be specific enough to provide the authors with important academic reference value in revising their manuscript.