Journal of Restorative Medicine: Guidelines for Peer Reviewers

For Reviewers

In accordance with COPE guidelines  reviewers are required to treat any manuscripts they are asked to review as confidential. This means not sharing the manuscript itself, the review, or information about the review with anyone without the express permission of the JRM editor in chief.

Please make comments directly in the manuscript using the Microsoft Word “track changes” feature. Your review will be anonymized before being passed to the author. Please write a report (at the top of the manuscript, in an email, or in a separate document) that summarizes your review. This report should include any comments for the editor’s eyes only (under the heading Confidential to the Editor), and your specific and general comments to the author (under the heading Comments to the Author). Organize comments in your summary report in the same order as the manuscript’s sections, specifying page, paragraph, and line where possible. Where necessary, please provide examples to clarify your comments.

Reviews are due within 10 business days from the date you receive a manuscript. Please make arrangements in advance if these terms are not possible.

You may be asked to give a second review on papers that required significant changes.

Please be constructive in any feedback you give to authors, and use the following guidelines as a framework for your review. (In addition, you may want to explore http://www.equator-network.org/ for a wide variety of tools that can be helpful in the assessment of manuscripts.)

For All Articles

  • Is this article novel/important? For example, will it help practitioners make better decisions for their patients? Does it expand or deepen the field of restorative/integrative medicine? Could it contribute to health policy?
  • Does it fit within the scope and mission of the Journal?
  • Does it add to existing knowledge?
  • Does it have a clear and coherent message?
  • Is it well presented? Does it make sense?
  • Other strengths/weaknesses?

For Original Research and Scientific Articles

  • Originality:
    • Does the article contain new material or make a worthwhile addition to the published literature?
  • Scientific Reliability:
    • Clearly defined research question that is appropriately answered?
    • Study design appropriate to address the research question?
    • Study participants are fully described including inclusion/exclusion criteria? Participants are representative of patients in the “real” world?
    • Methods and main outcome measures are clear and appropriate?
    • Results are credible and answer the research question being asked?
    • Conclusion is appropriate to the data collected? Mention of future directions?
    • Discussion is clear and in the context of previous studies where possible?
    • References are relevant and up to date? Any egregious omissions?
    • Abstract/Summary accurately reflects the content of the paper
    • For Review Articles:
      Is this review balanced and impartial (avoids selecting only those papers that support the author’s own view point)?
      • Does it address:
      o Major achievements in the relevant field?
      o Main areas of debate?
      o Future research directions?

Overall Rating and Recommendation

Based on your review, please indicate your recommendation for the article by choosing one of the following:

  1. Acceptable for publication as is or with minor changes
  2. Provisional acceptance (conditional on making satisfactory revisions)
  3. Needs major revisions (cannot make a definitive decision at this point)
  4. Unacceptable/Reject

 

Issues

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