Reviewer guidelines

Peer review is confidential and must be objective, respectful, evidence-based, and timely. Before accepting an invitation, reviewers must confirm their expertise, availability, and absence of conflicts.

Responsibilities

• Do not disclose, share, or use unpublished information.
• Do not upload manuscripts to external AI services without authorization and adequate privacy safeguards.
• Disclose financial, employment, academic, institutional, personal, or intellectual conflicts.
• Alert the editor to similarities, missing sources, manipulation, or ethical concerns.
• Separate comments for authors from confidential comments for the editor.

Assessment criteria

Fit; originality; relevance; clarity of the problem; background; methods; validity of results; discussion; conclusions; limitations; references; tables and figures; ethics; data; language quality; and scientific contribution.

Recommendations

• Accept.
• Minor revisions.
• Major revisions and further review.
• Reject with an option to submit a substantially new manuscript.
• Reject.

The recommendation must be justified. Reviewers are not asked to identify authors in a double-anonymous process.