Thursday, May 23, 2013
memo 4a reviewer
When assessing the work, please consider the following points:
1. Is the question posed by the authors new and well defined?
2. Are the methods appropriate and well described, and are sufficient details provided to replicate the work?
3. Are the data sound and well controlled?
4. Does the manuscript adhere to the relevant standards for reporting and data deposition?
5. Are the discussion and conclusions well balanced and adequately supported by the data?
6. Do the title and abstract accurately convey what has been found?
7. Is the writing acceptable?
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- Major Compulsory Revisions (which the author must respond to before a decision on publication can be reached)
ReplyDelete- Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of a term, which the author can be trusted to correct)
- Discretionary Revisions (which are recommendations for improvement but which the author can choose to ignore)
Once you have done this, there are also some questions for you to answer, including one that asks your advice on publication.
REPORT TEMPLATE
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Confidential comments to editors
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Please use this only for comments that relate to ethical or policy issues. Do not use it to repeat all or part of the comments in your review for the authors. These comments will not be included in the report passed to the authors.
Reviewer's report
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Please number your comments and divide them into:
- Major Compulsory Revisions
The author must respond to these before a decision on publication can be reached. For example, additional necessary experiments or controls, statistical mistakes, errors in interpretation.
- Minor Essential Revisions
The author can be trusted to make these. For example, missing labels on figures, the wrong use of a term, spelling mistakes.
- Discretionary Revisions
These are recommendations for improvement which the author can choose to ignore. For example clarifications, data that would be useful but not essential.
Please note that both the comments entered here and answers to the questions below constitute the report that will be passed on to the authors.
What next?
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Given your assessment of the manuscript, what do you advise should be the next step?
- Accept without revision
- Accept after discretionary revisions (which the authors can choose to ignore)
- Accept after minor essential revisions (which the authors can be trusted to make)
- Unable to decide on acceptance or rejection until the authors have responded to the major compulsory revisions
- Reject as not sufficiently sound
- Reject as not of sufficient priority to merit publishing in this journal
Level of interest
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Please indicate how interesting you found the manuscript:
- An exceptional article (of the kind that might be found in a leading, broad interest journal such as Nature, Cell, Science, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet)
- An article of outstanding merit and interest in its field (of the kind that might be found in the leading specialist journal in the field)
- An article of importance in its field
- An article whose findings are important to those with closely related research interests
- An article of limited interest
- Reject as not of sufficient priority to merit publishing in this journal
Quality of written English
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Please indicate the quality of language in the manuscript:
- Not suitable for publication unless extensively edited
- Needs some language corrections before being published
- Acceptable
Statistical review
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Is it essential that this manuscript is seen by an expert statistician? If so, please give your reasons in your report.
- Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
- Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the statistics.
- No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.