The Advanced Journal of Science and Innovation (AJSI) values the essential contribution of peer reviewers to the quality, integrity, fairness, and credibility of scholarly publishing.
These guidelines provide practical and ethical guidance for reviewers invited to assess manuscripts submitted to AJSI. Reviewers are expected to conduct reviews objectively, confidentially, constructively, and within the agreed review period.
1. Role of Reviewers
Reviewers provide independent expert advice to editors. Their role is to assess the scholarly quality, originality, methodological soundness, ethical compliance, clarity, and relevance of a manuscript.
Reviewers make recommendations to the editor but do not make the final publication decision. The final editorial decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief or an authorized editor.
2. Before Accepting a Review Invitation
Before accepting an invitation, reviewers should consider:
• Expertise: Reviewers should accept only manuscripts that fall within their area of expertise and that they can assess competently.
• Availability: Reviewers should accept only when they can complete the review within the stated deadline.
• Conflicts of Interest: Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest before accepting a review.
• Confidentiality: Reviewers must be able to maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript and all related editorial communications.
Reviewers should decline the invitation if they:
• Do not have sufficient expertise.
• Cannot complete the review within the requested timeframe.
• Have a personal, professional, financial, institutional, supervisory, collaborative, competitive, or other conflict of interest with any author or with the manuscript topic.
• Have participated in the research, writing, development, or prior review of the manuscript.
• Work at the same institution as an author where this may affect independent judgment.
• Believe that they cannot provide an objective, fair, and constructive assessment.
Where possible, reviewers may suggest alternative qualified reviewers to the editor. Suggested reviewers must not have relevant conflicts of interest.
3. Confidentiality
All submitted manuscripts, supplementary files, editorial correspondence, reviewer reports, author information, and unpublished data must be treated as confidential.
Reviewers must not:
• Share, discuss, distribute, copy, retain, publish, or use manuscript content for personal, professional, commercial, educational, or research purposes.
• Contact authors directly regarding a manuscript under review.
• Reveal their role as a reviewer or disclose the existence of a manuscript under review.
• Use unpublished information obtained through peer review for personal advantage or for the advantage of another person or organization.
Reviewers may consult a colleague only with prior authorization from the editor and only when confidentiality is protected. Any consulted person must also declare conflicts of interest and maintain confidentiality.
4. Double-Anonymized Peer Review
AJSI uses a double-anonymized peer-review process when applicable. Reviewers should not attempt to identify the authors, and authors should not attempt to identify reviewers.
Reviewers must not include their name, affiliation, identifying references, document properties, or other information that could reveal their identity in review comments or annotated files.
If reviewers believe that they have identified an author and this creates a conflict of interest or affects impartiality, they must inform the editor immediately.
5. How to Evaluate a Manuscript
Reviewers should assess manuscripts fairly, objectively, and according to scholarly criteria. Reviews should focus on the work rather than the authors.
Reviewers should consider:
• Relevance: Does the manuscript fit the journal’s aims and scope?
• Originality: Does the work provide a meaningful and original contribution to the field?
• Research Question and Objectives: Are the research problem, question, objectives, or hypotheses clear and significant?
• Methodology: Are the study design, methods, data sources, sampling, instruments, procedures, and analyses appropriate, sufficiently described, and scientifically sound?
• Results and Evidence: Are the results clearly presented, accurate, complete, and supported by the data?
• Discussion and Conclusions: Are the findings interpreted appropriately? Are conclusions supported by the results? Are limitations acknowledged?
• Literature and References: Does the manuscript engage appropriately with relevant and current literature? Are citations accurate, balanced, and free from inappropriate self-citation or citation manipulation?
• Ethics and Integrity: Are ethics approval, informed consent, data availability, conflicts of interest, funding, author contributions, and AI use disclosed where applicable?
• Writing and Presentation: Is the manuscript clearly written, logically organized, and professionally presented? Are tables, figures, and supplementary materials necessary, accurate, and understandable?
6. Review Comments
Review comments should be respectful, specific, evidence-based, and constructive. Reviewers should identify strengths as well as weaknesses and provide clear suggestions for improvement.
Comments to Authors are shared with the authors. They should focus on the manuscript’s scholarly content, clarity, methods, results, interpretation, and presentation.
Comments to the Editor are confidential and should be used for information that should not be shared with the authors, such as concerns about plagiarism, duplicate publication, ethical compliance, undisclosed conflicts of interest, reviewer conflicts, suspected misconduct, or other sensitive matters.
Reviewers must not include insulting, discriminatory, hostile, defamatory, personal, or irrelevant comments.
Reviewers should not request that authors cite the reviewer’s own work unless the citation is genuinely relevant, necessary, and academically justified.
7. Ethical Concerns and Suspected Misconduct
Reviewers should inform the editor confidentially and promptly if they identify or suspect:
• Plagiarism, text recycling, duplicate submission, duplicate publication, or redundant publication.
• Data fabrication, data falsification, manipulated images, misleading reporting, or unsupported conclusions.
• Missing ethics approval, lack of informed consent, inappropriate research involving human participants or animals, or breaches of confidentiality.
• Undisclosed financial, personal, institutional, or other conflicts of interest.
• Inappropriate authorship, ghost authorship, gift authorship, or authorship disputes.
• Citation manipulation, excessive self-citation, or coercive citation requests.
• Manipulation of the peer-review, authorship, editorial, or publication process.
Reviewers should not contact authors directly regarding suspected misconduct. Concerns must be reported only to the editor through the journal’s confidential editorial system.
8. Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools
Reviewers must not upload, copy, paste, or enter confidential manuscript content, reviewer reports, author information, unpublished data, or editorial correspondence into public, unsecured, or unauthorized artificial intelligence tools.
Reviewers must not use AI tools to generate a review report without explicit authorization from the journal. Where AI-assisted tools are authorized, reviewers remain fully responsible for the accuracy, fairness, confidentiality, and originality of the review and must comply with the journal’s Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools policy.
9. Submitting the Review
Reviewers should submit their review through the journal’s online system by the stated deadline.
The review report should include:
• A concise summary of the manuscript and its contribution.
• Major comments addressing substantial issues that may affect the validity, originality, clarity, methodology, analysis, ethics, or significance of the work.
• Minor comments addressing smaller issues such as wording, presentation, typographical errors, formatting, tables, figures, or references.
• A recommendation consistent with the comments provided.
Possible recommendations may include:
• Accept.
• Minor Revision.
• Major Revision.
• Reject and Resubmit.
• Reject.
The available recommendation options may vary according to the journal system and editorial workflow.
10. Review Timeline
Reviewers should complete their review within the agreed timeframe. If a reviewer anticipates a delay or becomes unable to complete the review, they should inform the editor as early as possible.
Timely reviews help ensure a fair and efficient editorial process and minimize unnecessary delays for authors.
11. Recognition of Reviewers
AJSI appreciates the voluntary contribution of reviewers. The journal may provide confirmation of completed reviews, a certificate of reviewing contribution, or other appropriate recognition, subject to the journal’s policies and protection of reviewer confidentiality.
Recognition does not affect editorial decisions and does not imply endorsement of any manuscript, author, or published article.
12. Contact
Questions concerning review invitations, reviewer responsibilities, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, ethical concerns, or technical issues should be directed to:
Advanced Journal of Science and Innovation (AJSI)
Email: info.journal@ajsi.org
Website: www.ajsi.org