REVIEWER GUIDELINES


JOMR is following "Editorial Policy Statements" of the Council of Science Editors (CSE) and adheres to the ethical guidelines for publication and research that follow the international standards and best practice guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME), as well the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).


Recommendations to Reviewers

We strongly recommend to read Author Guidelines before reviewing the article. Please observe carefully the following guidelines on the role of the referee.


1. Expertise: Articles are not always sent to reviewers whose field is identical to the subject matter of that paper. You don't have to be precisely qualified in a field to be a constructive reviewer. In fact, an excellent article will speak beyond its narrowly defined field. If, however, an article is so distant from your field that you do not feel qualified to judge its merits, please return it to the publishing manager for the journal, who will locate another reviewer.

2. Confidentiality: Reviewers receive unpublished work, which must be treated as confidential until published. They should destroy all electronic and printed copies of the draft article and reviewer report once they have received confirmation that their reports have been received by the publishing manager (in case we can't open the report files you send us). Reviewers must not disclose to others which articles they have reviewed; nor are they to share those articles with any other person.

3. Conflict of Interest: Reviewers must declare any conflict of interest or any other factor which may affect their independence in cases for instance, where they have received a article of a colleague or an intellectual opponent. In cases of conflict of interest, please notify the publishing manager of your inability to reviewer a particular article.

4. Intellectual Merit: An article must be judged on its intellectual merits alone. Personal criticism or criticism based solely on the political or social views of the reviewer is not acceptable.

5. Full Explanation: Critical or negative judgments must be fully supported by detailed reference to evidence from the article under review or other relevant sources.

6. Plagiarism and Copyright: If a reviewer considers that article may contain plagiarism or that it might breach another party's copyright, they should notify the publishing manager for the journal, providing the relevant citations to support their claim.

7. Responsiveness: Reviewers are asked to return their reports within six weeks. This assists us to provide rapid feedback to the author.

For more information, please refer to Policies and Ethics, Conflict of Interest and Peer Review Process.


Articles are assessed by reviewers against fourteen criteria

1. Relevance of themes;

2. Significance of themes;

3. Novelty of the paper;

4. Suitability of paper hypothesis and aim;

5. Clarity and suitability of Material and Methods;

6. Research design and data;

7. Clarity and relevancy of Results;

8. Informativeness and conciseness of Discussion;

9. Conclusions logic;

10. Suitability of References;

11. Clarity and suitability of illustrative material;

12. Proper amount of Figures and Tables;

13. Reviewer's qualification adequacy to the subject;

14. Paper value and contribution to the journal scientific development.

There may be fewer criteria if some do not apply to a particular kind of article.


Online manuscript evaluation steps

Step 1: Download manuscript and make your revision.

Step 2: Enter your comments to the authors (you can prepare your report 'off line' and then paste it into the appropriate fields to avoid the mistakes).

Step 3: Fill the questionnaire.

Step 4: Add any confidential comments to the Editorial Board.

Step 5: Rate the manuscript (1 = low to 5 = high) and make a recommendation.

Step 6: Check your review and send. You have the opportunity to check the details of your review before returning it. All steps must be completed before your review can be returned.


Reviewer may suggest one of the following recommendations

- "Accept" – no changes are required, or a limited number of linguistic or stylistic corrections are needed;

- "Accept with Revision" – some changes are required in order to make the manuscript clearer, better organized or stronger, but hypotheses, data, arguments and conclusions remain generally unchallenged;

- "Reject with Resubmission" – some changes that concern hypotheses, data, arguments or conclusions are required, but the changes may undermine the overall aim of the manuscript;

- "Reject" – no reasonable number of changes would make the manuscript acceptable for publication.