Reviewer Guidelines

How to become a reviewer

Participation in the peer-review process is absolutely essential to the success and reputation of the journal.  Our endeavors to administer a fair and timely review process for all of our manuscripts and to publish only papers of the highest quality are largely dependent upon the efforts of reviewers like you. Your help with meeting these important objectives is greatly appreciated.

Most people are invited by the Editor of a journal to conduct a review. An Editor may approach you because you are a specialist in a certain field or research topic. Still, to be a good reviewer requires a certain skill set. If you think you would be a good reviewer for a specific journal you can always contact the Journal's Editors. 

Locate the journal you need to review for

You are notified by e-mail when an Editor or Editorial Office invites you to review a submission for a journal. Once you have agreed to review, an email with further instructions will be sent to you. These emails contain the journal title as well as an abstract of that manuscript. The same time login user name and password also provided for accessing the account. The reviewers also use this user and password for all review process and need not be registered again.  

Reviewer Recognition

United Life publication (ULP) would like to express gratitude reviewers for their contribution, without which it would be impossible to maintain the high standards of peer-reviewed journals. Reviewers’ names will be listed in the journal’s reviewer acknowledgement page.

Check that you have enough time

Reviewing an article can be quite time consuming. The time taken to review can vary greatly between disciplines and of course on article type, but on average, an article will take about 10 days to review properly. Will you have sufficient time before the deadline stipulated in the invitation to conduct a thorough review?

Understand what it means to accept to review and manage deadlines

Deadlines for reviews vary for every journal. The editors will provide information on deadline expectations with the review request.  If you feel the review will take you longer to complete than normal, please contact the editor to discuss the matter. The editor may ask you to recommend an alternate reviewer, or may be willing to wait a little longer (e.g., if the paper is highly specialized and reviewers are difficult to find). As a general guideline, if you know you will not be able to complete a review within the time frame requested, you should decline to review the paper.

Peer-reviewer responsibilities toward authors

• Providing written, unbiased 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

Peer-reviewer responsibilities toward editors

• Notifying the editor immediately if unable to review in a timely manner and providing the names of potential other reviewers
• Complying with the editor’s written instructions on the journal’s expectations for the scope, content, and quality of the review
• 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; and recommending acceptance or rejection using whatever rating scale the editor deems most useful
• 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 which may be known to the reviewer
• Refraining from direct author contact

Peer-reviewer responsibilities toward readers

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

Explain your opinion

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.

Classify your recommendation

When you make a recommendation regarding an article, it is worth considering the categories the editor most likely uses for classifying the article:

-Reject (explain reason in report)
-Accept without revision
-Revise ( Major or minor corrections)