Reviewer Responsibilities

Contribution to Editorial Decisions

• The peer review process assists the editors in deciding whether to publish the submitted manuscript and the author in improving the paper, if necessary.

Competence and Meeting Deadlines

• Any selected reviewer who does not feel qualified to review the specific topic of a proposed article, or who knows that it will be impossible to review it in time, should inform the editors and ask to be excused from the review process.

Objectivity

• Peer review must be unbiased and objective, and the reviewer's evaluation should be based solely on the statements made in the article.
• Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Checking Sources and References

• Reviewers should identify instances where the author does not properly cite sources or ignores previously published relevant literature on the subject of the study.
  
• Reviewers should inform the editors of any significant similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and other published work of which they have personal knowledge.
  

Confidentiality

• Any manuscript submitted for peer review must be treated as a confidential document. Therefore, the reviewer is not permitted to disclose any information about the manuscript to any person not involved in the review process.

Avoidance of Conflicts of Interest

• Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest due to collaborative or other relationships with the author(s).