Guide for Reviewers

Kufa Medical Journal set the following guidelines for reviewers collaborating with this journal. 

General roles:

Reviewing a manuscript is a highly privilege task and, at the same time, is a time-consuming responsibility. That is why, KMJ Editorial board, authors and readers highly appreciate your willingness to accept this responsibility and your dedicated time. 

Kufa Medical Journal adopt to double blind peer review process which ensure a high quality of published articles. In that regard, KMJ urge the reviewers to provide objective, fair, helpful comments within allowed turnaround time for initial reviewing process.

The scope of KMJ for reviewing a manuscript:

  • Novelty
  • Originality
  • Scientific reliability
  • Valuable contribution to the science
  • Adding new aspects to the existed field of study
  • Ethical aspects
  • Structure of the article submitted and its relevance to authors’ guidelines
  • References provided to substantiate the content
  • Grammar, punctuation, and spelling
  • Scientific misconduct 

Reviewer responsibilities toward editors:

  • Notifying the editor if unable to review ASAP, in a timely manner and, if possible, suggest names of alternative reviewers.
  • Alerting the editor about any potential personal, financial or perceived conflict of interest and declining to review when a conflict exists.
  • Complying with the editor’s written instructions on the journal’s scope for reviewing a manuscript.
  • Providing a thoughtful, fair, constructive, and informative critique of the submitted work, which may include supplementary material provided to the journal by the author.
  • Determining scientific merit, originality, and scope of the work; indicating ways to improve it; along with recommending acceptance or rejection.
  • Noting any ethical concerns, such as any violation of accepted norms of ethical treatment of animal or human subjects or substantial similarity between the reviewed manuscript and any published paper or any manuscript concurrently submitted to another journal that may be known to the reviewer.
  • Refraining from direct author contact.
  • Filling-in the evaluation list as set at the journal web (reviewer panel).

Reviewer responsibilities toward authors

  • Providing written, unbiased, constructive feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the work, together with the documented basis for the reviewer’s opinion.
  • Indicating whether the writing is clear, concise, and relevant and rating the work’s composition, scientific accuracy, originality, and interest to the journal’s readers
  • Avoiding personal comments or criticism.
  • Maintaining the confidentiality of the review process, not sharing, discussing with third parties, or disclosing information from the reviewed paper.

 Reviewer responsibilities toward readers:

  • Ensuring that the methods and analysis are adequately detailed to allow the reader to judge the scientific merit of the study design and be able to replicate the study
  • Ensuring that the article cites all relevant work by other scientist.

 

Click the following link to Downlaod the Guide for Reviewers in PDF Format.