Check List for Peer Reviewers

·         Before starting, ensure that you are free from any conflicts of interest and that you’re aware of our confidentiality requirements and the basic principles of peer review.

·         Does the paper meet a high standard of scientific quality and credibility?

·         Is the paper readable and appropriately presented?

·         Are the authors credible?

·         Does the paper contain appropriate referencing and any recognizable plagiarism?

·         Is the paper compliant with the aims and scope of the journal it is submitted to?

·         Does the paper contain disqualified content?

·         Does the paper meet ethical requirements?

·         Other things to remember: your review must be a minimum of one large paragraph in length and must demonstrate full critical engagement with the paper.  Please don’t include explicit statements on whether the paper should be published or not.  If your review doesn’t meet these criteria your review will not be used by the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor in charge.

Basic Principles of Peer Review

Peer reviewers are asked to provide thoughtful and unbiased feedback to authors to ensure that the conclusions of papers are valid and supported by the data and manuscripts achieve reasonable standards of scholarliness and intelligibility.  Reviewers should focus on the science of the paper.

Scientific Quality and Credibility

The arguments and conclusions of the paper under review should be valid and supported by data reported in the paper or referenced in other papers.  The paper under review should be of a tone appropriate to a scientific journal.

Readability and Presentation

The paper under review should read without difficulty.  To avoid production delays IJBC does not copy edit manuscripts, so if the paper under review reads badly you should recommend copy editing as a condition of acceptance.

Referencing and Plagiarism

The paper under review should be free from unreferenced material published elsewhere.  If you identify material that appears to be plagiarized please inform editor@ijbcnet.com .  The matter will be referred to the Editor in Chief.  IJBC does not consider publication of a scientific poster by the authors of the paper to constitute plagiarism.

Suitability for the Journal

The paper under review should fit comfortably within the aims and scope of the journal it has been submitted to.

The paper under review should not be likely to bring the journal into disrepute should it be published owing to the paper's content or the content of other papers published elsewhere by the same author(s).

Validation of Data

In areas of genuinely novel research issues may be raised in papers of otherwise good quality which cannot immediately be resolved and absolutely rigorous validation of data may therefore not be possible.

Authors

Authors should disclose their affiliations and work at credible recognized private or public institutions.

Ethical considerations

IJBC requires authors to confirm that they have complied with all necessary ethical requirements around identifiable human subjects and experiments involving humans and animals, both when their paper is submitted and prior to publication.  Editorial decision makers (Editors in Chief or Associate Editors) also look closely at these matters.  If you have concerns about these areas you may add them to your peer review report.