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1. Managing Your Review
Confidential material
If you accept, you must treat the materials you receive as confidential documents. This means you can’t share them with anyone without prior authorization from the editor. Since peer review is confidential, you also must not share information about the review with anyone without permission from the editors and authors.
Please refer to Confidentiality of Duties of reviewers of Elsevier https://beta.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/publishing-ethics?trial=true#3-duties-of-reviewers.
How to log in and access your review
Your review will be managed via an online submission system at https://vjs.ac.vn/index.php/vjbio/login
Article and journal-specific instructions
If the journal in question does not require you to respond to a list of specific questions, you might find it helpful to consider the below points before preparing your comments to the editor/author(s):
+ Research article
The review should focus on and evaluate about:
- The novel, innovative, and important of the manuscript.
- Interest level
- Scientific quality
- Clearly identify the strengths and weaknesses of the method described in the manuscript.
- English quality in the manuscript.
- Make specific useful comments on the results of the manuscript.
- Interpretation of findings, limitations, and implications or recommendations for future research.
- Offer specific comments on the author’s interpretation of the results and conclusions drawn from the results.
+ Review article
- Discuss the importance of the topic/scope of the review.
- Assess the originality of the review.
- Assess the novelty, creativity and importance of the topic of the review
- Comment on the author's representation of the most relevant recent advances in the field. Specifically, determine whether the references are relevant to the topic and cover both historical literature and more recent developments.
- Offer comments on the writing, organization, tables, and figures of the manuscript.
- Comment on the author's interpretation of the results and answers in terms of practice or theoretical of the results
+ Short communications
- Short Communications are short papers that present original and significant material for rapid dissemination.
- A Short Communication may focus on a particular aspect of a problem or a new finding that is expected to have a significant impact.
- Short articles include the discovery or development of cutting-edge experiments, novel, innovative, and important.
- Short Communications are expected to have a higher than average impact on the field of biology rather than a research report. The paper should contain an abstract, main body and references
2. Read the article
In any case, your first task is to read the article. You might consider spot-checking major issues by choosing which section to read first. Below we offer some tips about handling specific parts of the paper.
Methodology
Check the methods section first. The following cases are considered major flaws and should be flagged:
- Unsound methodology
- Discredited method
- Missing processes are known to be influential in the area of reported research
- The documents used in the study were not cited
- Abbreviations are not interpreted.
- A conclusion drawn in contradiction to the statistical or qualitative evidence reported in the manuscript
For analytical papers examine the sampling report, which is mandated in time-dependent studies. For qualitative research make sure that a systematic data analysis is presented and sufficient descriptive elements with relevant quotes.
Research data
Once you are satisfied that the methodology is sufficiently robust, examine any data in the form of figures, tables, or images. The authors may add research data, including data visualizations, to their submissions to enable readers to interact and engage more closely with their research after publication. The data might therefore be present in the submission files. These items should also receive your attention during the peer review process.
Critical issues in research data that are considered to be major flaws can be related to insufficient study points, statistically non-significant variations, and unclear data tables.
Ethical considerations
These will be in the journal’s guide for Publication Ethics https://vjs.ac.vn/index.php/vjbio/publication-ethics.
Overview
If you don’t spot any major flaws, take a break from the manuscript, giving you time to think. When you sit down to write the review, again make sure you familiarize yourself with any journal-specific guidelines. These will be noted in the journal’s guide for authors https://vjs.ac.vn/index.php/vjbio/about/submissions#authorGuidelines.
Structuring Your Review
Your review will help the editor decide whether or not to publish the article. It will also aid the author and allow them to improve their manuscript. Giving your overall opinion and general observations of the article is essential. Your comments should be courteous and constructive, and should not include any ad hominem remarks or personal details including your name.
Providing insight into any deficiencies is important. You should explain and support your judgment so that both editors and authors are able to fully understand the reasoning behind your comments. You should indicate whether your comments are your own opinion or are reflected by the data and evidence.
Your recommendation
When you make a recommendation, it is worth considering the categories the editor will likely use for classifying the article:
- Reject (explain your reasoning in your report)
- Accept without revision
- Revise – either major or minor (explain the revision that is required, and indicate to the editor whether you would be happy to review the revised article). If you are recommending a revision, you must furnish the author with a clear, sound explanation of why this is necessary.
The final decision
The editor ultimately decides whether to accept or reject the article. The editor will weigh all views and may call for another opinion or ask the author for a revised paper before making a decision.
