Thank you for agreeing to review a paper submitted to SRHM for publication.
Before you begin your review, please read the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines for reviewers: https://publicationethics.org/files/Ethical_Guidelines_For_Peer_Reviewers_2.pdf. If you have any potential conflicts of interest with regard to the manuscript that you have agreed to review, please contact the editorial team ([email protected]) straight away.
SRHM’s submission and peer review system is operated through our publishers, Taylor & Francis, in their Editorial Manager system: http://zrhm.edmgr.com/. All requests for peer reviews, and the process of submitting reviews, will come through this system. We ask to receive all peer reviews within two weeks, unless otherwise agreed.
SRHM operates a peer review system where reviewers know authors’ names. Reviewers are not named, but they may choose to include their name in the review and many welcome contact with authors to share information.
You should treat the contents of the paper as confidential. You must not show it to anyone else (unless you have obtained permission from the journal to do so), copy it, quote from it or use the information in your own work.
Your peer review will have two sections: (1) comments to the editor; and (2) comments to the author(s). Please use the following guidelines when preparing your review:
RECOMMENDATION TO THE EDITOR
Based on your review of the paper, please make one of the following recommendations and indicate whether you are willing to re-review the paper if it is necessary.
- Minor revisions
- Major revisions
- Resubmit a new, extensively revised version of the paper, possibly for further review
- Reject
State in this section any reason for this recommendation that you want only the editors to see. Please do not repeat what you have said to the authors.
Please note that where a paper contains valuable data, ideas, perspectives and experiences, but needs additional information, substantial editing or re-writing in order to be publishable, our policy is to try to work with the authors to achieve this, rather than to reject the paper. A good peer review is crucial for this process.
Finally, if there is something you feel you cannot say to the author directly, but think it ought to be said, tell the editor.
PEER REVIEW FOR THE AUTHOR(S)
These comments – as you have written them – will be sent on to the authors. Please write your review in as much depth as you yourself would find helpful if it was your own paper. Please be constructive, and if you think SRHM should aim to accept the paper, give as much guidance as you can on how it can or should be improved.
Please include the following in your review:
- If you wish the author(s) to know your name, please include your name, position, institution, country − and your email address if you are happy to be contacted by the author– at the top of the review.
- Say briefly what the strong points of the paper are. Please consider the following structure for your review:
- Overall remarks − How could the paper be better structured? What could be expanded upon or moved around? If it is too long, what might be omitted? How might the paper be improved?
- Specific aspects of each section of the paper, e.g. on what should be added, omitted, or amended.
- Methodology and findings – What needs to be added or clarified?
- Discussion – What value or significance do you think the data, issues or findings have which is not mentioned?
- Conclusions and recommendations – What additional or different conclusions can be drawn? What else might be recommended based on the findings?
- References – Note any assertions that are not backed up by evidence or adequately referenced. Provide some of the most important additional references or information that you think should be included or give help on where to find these.
- Ethics – Please let us know if you feel there are ethical concerns or irregularities.
Very few papers are ready for publication when they are submitted. The more guidance you can give, the better. Praise only or one-line comments (e.g. “the paper could be better structured”) without specific suggestions for improvements are not useful. The purpose of your review is to help the author to bring the paper to a high standard and to make it ready for publication. Put yourself in the author’s shoes.
THE PROCESS FROM START TO FINISH
- Agree or decline to do the review as soon as possible on receiving the request.
- If you cannot do the review, suggest at least one other knowledgeable reviewer to approach, with their e-mail address.
- Submit your recommendation and review in a timely way. The exact date your review is due will be in the invitation to review. Reviewers are all busy people, but we hope you can respond in the time agreed once you have received the paper. We will send you reminders to help you.
Many thanks!
We very much appreciate your support. Your name will be included in the list of reviewers in the next journal issue unless you indicate otherwise.
In case of any queries, please contact: [email protected]
Updated 22 June 2020