Reviewers Guidelines

1. Purpose and Principles

Premier Academic Publishers is committed to a fair, rigorous, confidential, and ethically responsible peer-review process. Peer review helps editors assess the originality, reliability, significance, clarity, and suitability of submitted work. Reviewers provide expert advice; the editor retains responsibility for the editorial decision. These guidelines establish common expectations across the publisher’s journals. Journal-specific instructions may address subject-specific standards, article types, review forms, timelines, and review models.

2. Reviewer Selection and Acceptance

Reviewers are invited based on relevant subject expertise, research or professional experience, and their ability to provide an independent assessment. Editors may invite members of a journal’s editorial board and qualified external researchers. A manuscript should be assigned only to individuals who accept the invitation and confirm that they can review it competently and impartially.

When responding to an invitation, reviewers should consider the manuscript’s subject, their expertise, their availability, and any actual, potential, or perceived competing interests. Reviewers should decline promptly if they cannot provide a timely or suitably informed review.

3. Core Responsibilities

• Provide an independent, evidence-based, balanced, and constructive assessment.
• Treat the manuscript, supplementary files, review invitation, and editorial correspondence as confidential.
• Identify major scientific, methodological, reporting, interpretive, and ethical concerns clearly and respectfully.
• Support criticism with specific explanations and, where useful, references or examples.
• Avoid personal remarks, discriminatory language, unsupported allegations, and demands unrelated to improving the manuscript.
• Submit the review by the stated deadline or request an extension from the editor before the deadline expires.
• Disclose relevant competing interests and notify the editor if circumstances change during the review.

4. Confidentiality and Responsible Handling of Manuscripts

A manuscript under review is confidential and must not be shared, copied, distributed, or discussed with others without the editor’s permission. Reviewers must not use unpublished information, data, methods, or ideas for their own research, teaching, commercial activity, or personal advantage.

Reviewers should not contact authors directly about a submission unless the editor has explicitly authorised this. If specialist advice from another person is genuinely needed, the reviewer must first seek the editor’s permission and ensure that confidentiality is maintained.

5. Competing Interests and Reviewer Independence

A competing interest may be financial, professional, institutional, personal, collaborative, or academic. Examples include a close personal relationship with an author, a recent or ongoing close collaboration, a direct competitive interest in the findings, a financial relationship relevant to the work, or an involvement that could reasonably call the reviewer’s impartiality into question.

Reviewers must disclose relevant circumstances to the editor and allow the editor to decide whether they may proceed. A competing interest does not automatically imply misconduct, but it must be handled transparently. Reviewers should not use the review to promote their own work or insist that authors cite the reviewer’s publications unless those references are genuinely necessary and objectively justified.

6. Scientific Assessment

The criteria applicable to a manuscript depend on its discipline, design, and article type. Reviewers should assess the work against appropriate scholarly standards rather than expecting every paper to use the same methods or structure.

• Originality and contribution: Is the question or contribution clear, relevant, and adequately distinguished from existing literature?
• Validity and rigour: Are the design, methods, sampling, measurements, analyses, and interpretations appropriate and sufficiently explained?
• Transparency and reproducibility: Are methods, materials, data availability, code, protocols, and analytical choices reported adequately where applicable?
• Results and conclusions: Do the results answer the stated objectives, and are conclusions proportionate to the evidence?
• Literature and citations: Is relevant literature represented fairly and accurately, without unnecessary or coercive citation requests?
• Presentation: Are the title, abstract, organisation, tables, figures, terminology, and references clear and accurate?
• Significance and scope: Is the manuscript appropriate for the journal and likely to make a meaningful contribution to its readership?

7. Research Ethics and Publication Integrity

Reviewers should consider whether the manuscript reports appropriate ethical oversight and safeguards for the research described. Requirements depend on the study design, jurisdiction, discipline, and applicable standards.

• Human-participant research: look for appropriate ethics review or an explanation of why approval was not required, informed consent where applicable, privacy protection, and safeguards for vulnerable participants.
• Animal research: consider whether relevant ethical approval, welfare safeguards, and applicable reporting requirements are addressed.
• Clinical trials and intervention studies: assess registration, protocol transparency, outcome reporting, and disclosure of adverse events where applicable.
• Research integrity: alert the editor confidentially to specific concerns about possible plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or falsified data, manipulated images, undisclosed conflicts, or other potential misconduct.
• Reporting standards: where appropriate, consider relevant guidelines such as CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, CARE, ARRIVE, or other standards suited to the study design.

Reviewers should not make public accusations or attempt to investigate suspected misconduct independently. They should provide the editor with the specific evidence or passages that prompted concern and allow the journal to follow its procedures.

8. Artificial Intelligence and Digital Tools

Reviewers must protect confidential manuscript content when using digital tools. Unless the journal expressly permits it and confidentiality safeguards are satisfied, reviewers must not upload manuscripts, unpublished data, identifiable information, or editorial correspondence to public or third-party generative AI systems.

AI tools must not replace the reviewer’s own expert judgment. Reviewers are responsible for the accuracy, fairness, confidentiality, and integrity of the submitted report. If a journal permits AI assistance, reviewers must follow its disclosure requirements and must not rely on AI-generated claims, references, or assessments without verification.

9. Preparing a Constructive Review

A useful review distinguishes essential scientific concerns from optional improvements. Reviewers should explain why a concern affects the validity, interpretation, transparency, or readability of the work and state what change would address it. Requests for new experiments or additional analyses should be proportionate and necessary to support the central claims.

• Begin with a concise overall assessment of the manuscript’s contribution and principal strengths.
• List major concerns in a logical order, referring to relevant sections, page numbers, tables, figures, or quoted passages when possible.
• Provide actionable recommendations and distinguish essential revisions from minor corrections.
• Comment on limitations and whether conclusions are appropriately cautious.
• Include minor editorial suggestions only where they improve clarity, accuracy, or presentation.
• Ensure that the written comments support the recommendation selected in the review system.

10. Recommendations to the Editor

Reviewers advise the editor; they do not make the final publication decision. The options offered by a journal may vary, but commonly include:

• Accept: the manuscript is suitable for publication without substantive changes.
• Minor revision: limited corrections or clarifications are needed before a decision can be made.
• Major revision: substantial changes, additional justification, reanalysis, or clearer reporting are required before reconsideration.
• Reject: fundamental concerns about validity, originality, ethics, scope, or contribution mean that the manuscript is not suitable for publication in its current form.

The recommendation should be consistent with the review’s reasoning. Reviewers should not promise acceptance, communicate editorial decisions to authors, or assume that their recommendation determines the outcome.

11. Review Timelines and Revised Manuscripts

Reviewers should follow the deadline in the invitation and contact the editor promptly if they need an extension. If they cannot complete the review, they should decline or withdraw as soon as possible so that the editor can make alternative arrangements.

When invited to assess a revised manuscript, reviewers should focus on whether the authors have addressed the previous comments adequately and whether any remaining concerns are material. Reviewers should not introduce unrelated new requirements at a late stage unless a newly identified issue warrants them.

12. Comments to Authors and Confidential Comments to the Editor

Comments intended for authors should be professional, specific, and focused on improving the work. Confidential comments to the editor may explain a recommendation or raise sensitive concerns that should not be disclosed directly to authors. Reviewers should not place essential scientific criticisms only in confidential comments; the authors need to understand the substantive changes required.

13. Recognition and Reviewer Conduct

Premier Academic Publishers values the time and expertise contributed by reviewers. Journals may acknowledge reviewers’ service in accordance with their policies and reviewers’ confidentiality preferences. Reviewers should not claim credit for confidential reviews or disclose a manuscript’s identity or contents without authorisation.

14. Policy Application and Questions

These guidelines provide a common framework for journals published by Premier Academic Publishers. Where a journal’s published instructions provide more specific requirements, reviewers should follow those instructions unless the editor advises otherwise. Questions about an invitation, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, ethical concerns, or review procedures should be directed to the handling editor or the journal’s editorial office.