COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers

The reviewers should

• only agree to review manuscripts for which they have the subject expertise required to carry out a proper assessment and which they can assess in a timely manner
• respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of manuscript or its peer review, during or after the peer-review process, beyond those that are released by the journal
• not use information obtained during the peer-review process for their own or any other person’s or organisation’s advantage
• declare all potential conflicts interests
• not allow their reviews to be influenced by the origins of a manuscript, by the nationality, religions or politics belongs, gender or other characteristics of authors, or by commercial consideration
• be objective and constructive in their reviews
• acknowledge that peer-review is largely reciprocal endeavour and undertake to carry out their share of reviewing and in a timely manner
• provide journal with personal and professional information
• recognize that impersonation or another individual during the review process is considered serious misconducts

In order to ensure fairness in the referee process, we try to avoid referees who: have recent or ongoing collaborations with the authors, have commented on drafts of the manuscript, are in direct competition, have a history of dispute with the authors, or have a financial interest in the outcome. Because it is not possible for the editors to know of all possible biases, however, we ask referees to draw our attention to anything that might affect their report, including commercial interests, and to decline to referee in cases where they feel unable to be objective. We do not find it necessary to exclude referees who have reviewed a paper for another journal; the fact that two journals have independently identified a particular person as well qualified to referee a paper does not decrease the validity of her/his opinion in our view.

The authors of submitted papers have right to make confidential comments to the review editor which will be considered and either accepted or exerted editor’s response via comments to the some data of these confidential comments of the authors. Such communications between the authors of submitted papers and editor should contribute to the improvement as of the review process as well as of content submission.

Reviewer’s comments to the authors of the submitted papers, which should be subjected to revision, must be studied by the authors of the submitted papers carefully, and authors of the submitted papers must make the new submission of the revised manuscript taking into account all comments or remarks of the reviewer. Besides the authors of the submitted papers should make own responses on all reviewer’s comments. Such communications between the authors of submitted papers and reviewer should contribute to the improvement quality of revised submission.

Peer review in all its forms plays an important role in ensuring the integrity of the journal record. The process depends to a large extent on trust, and requires that everyone involved behaves responsibly and ethically. Peer reviewers play a central and critical part in the peer-review process. NobleResearch Publishers has produced some guidelines which set out the basic principles and standards to which all peer reviewers should adhere during the peer-review process in research publication (see above Reviewer Guidelines). The aim has been to make them generic so that they can be applied across disciplines.