Strides in Development of Medical Education

Introduction

 Peer review as a necessary stage in the publication process, and review process is a crucial part of the process of publication for a manuscript. Review process can help editors in making decision and also enable the authors improving the manuscript.

Peer-Review and Editorial Procedure

The strides of development in medical education (SDME) operates a double-blind peer review system. Our experts thoroughly strictly and peer-review all sent manuscripts our managing editor is responsible for primary check of the manuscript’s suitability when it is received. The Editorial Office is responsible for organizing the peer-review process conducted by independent experts and collecting a minimum of four reports for each manuscript. The editor-in-chief, academic editor, and editorial board member make the final decision .

Invitation to Review

At least two experts review submitted manuscripts to SDME journal. They evaluate the manuscript quality and offer suggestions to the editor regarding acceptance or rejection of the manuscript and needed revisions.

  • The Reviewers manuscript should be within their area of expertise of the reviewers and they can spend enough time to conduct a review before accepting its review o .

The invited reviewers are asked to:

  • Decline or accept any invitations promptly, according to the manuscript abstract and title;
  • suggest other reviewers in case of declined invitation;
  • request an extension when there is a need for more time for a report;
  • Make us inform if others, like other colleague and a student, will take part in writing the review.

As part of the evaluation, we will reviewers:

  • the significance, originality, overall merit interest to the readers, presentation quality, scientific soundness, and manuscript English level;
  • to consider the manuscript reference list and report improper self-citations;
  • to offer a general suggestion for the manuscript publication;

Possible Conflicts of Interests

Reviewers are asked to make the editor of the journal inform if they have conflicts of interests possibly prejudicing the review report, positively or negatively. Although the editorial office is responsible for checking before invitation, the cooperation of reviewers are appreciated. Reviewers inviting to evaluate a manuscript already reviewed for other journals should not regard this as a conflict of interest. In this regard, they should make us inform if this manuscript has been improved or not compared to its previous version. “Reviewers should declare their relationships and activities that might bias their evaluation of a manuscript and recuse themselves from the peer-review process if a conflict exists”. ICMJE

Anonymity and Confidentiality

Reviewers should preserve the manuscript content, such as the abstract, confidential. They should let the editorial office know if they would like a colleague or student to complete their review. SDME journal performs double blind peer review. Reviewers should not to provide the authors with their identity, either in metadata or in their comments for reports submitted in PDF or Microsoft Word format.

 “Respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and refrain from using information obtained during the peer review process for your own or another’s advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others”. COPE

  It should be considered that the reviewer can reach reports of other reviewers through the online submission system following the submission of your report.

Fairness

 Reviews are needed to be objective and honest and not be affected by:

  •  The manuscript origin
  •  The author’s political, religious, or cultural viewpoint
  •  The author’s race, gender, citizenry or ethnicity

Review reports

 In the review process, reviewers should consider:

  •  Technical quality
  •  Depth of research
  •  Originality
  •  Clarity of presentation
  •  Contribution to the field
  • Reviewers should consider publication ethics, editorial policies, and the instruction for authors by the author(s).
  • The report is needed to be objective, accurate, unambiguous and constructive. Comments should be trturned by constructive arguments and facts considering the manuscript content.
  • The manuscript should not be rewritten by reviewers; nonetheless, necessary suggestions and corrections should be made for improvement of the manuscript.

Timely Review Reports

The SDME tries to offer a high-quality and efficient publishing service to the scientific community as well as the authors. Reviewers are asked to help through providing timely review reports. The editorial office can be contacted in case of an extension to the review deadline.

Reviewers’ Recommendations

Please note the below manuscript aspects:

  • Novelty / Originality: Is the main question well defined? Do the findings result in an advance in present knowledge?
  • Significance: Are the findings interpreted properly? Are the findings significant? Do results justify and support all conclusions? Are speculations and hypotheses accurately identified?
  • Quality of Presentation: Is the manuscript written appropriately? Are the analyses and data presented properly? Are the most accepted standards for result presentation used?
  • Scientific Soundness: is the research technically sound and accurately designed? Are the analyses conducted considering the most accepted technical standards? Are the data are strong to make a conclusion? Are the tools, methods, reagents and software introduced with sufficiently to reproduce the findings by another researcher?
  • Interest to the Readers: Are the Journal readership interested in the conclusions? Will the manuscript be attracted by a wide readership, or it will be interesting merely to few people? (Please see the journal Scope and Aims)
  • Overall Merit: Is there a benefit to publishing this study? Does this study offer an advance towards the current knowledge? Does an important long-standing question with smart experiments has been addressed by the authors?

General and specific concept comments

  • Article: highlighting weakness areas, missing controls, the hypothesis testability, methodological inaccuracies, etc.
  • Review: comment on the review subject completeness, the review topic relevance, the gap in knowledge identified, the reference appropriateness, etc. These comments emphasize on the manuscript scientific content and needed to be especial for the authors so that they can answer.
  • Specific comments referring to tables, line numbers, or figures pointing out inaccuracies in the sentences or text that are not clear. Such comments are needed to emphasize on formatting or english language problems, the scientific content and not on spelling, because they can be corrected later by our staff.

 Recommendation should be either:

  • Accept: The paper is accepted with no further alterations.
  • Requires minor revision: The paper is in principle accepted following revision according to the comments of reviewer.
  • Requires major revision: The manuscript can be accepted after the revisions. The author should give a point-by-point answer or give a rebuttal in case of no possibility for revision of some of the reviewer’s comments. Merely one round of major revisions can be accepted usually.
  • Reject: The manuscript possesses serious flaws and makes no original contribution, and it is rejected without offering resubmission to the journal.

Suggestions should be backed with constructive facts and arguments according to the manuscript content. Basic training for reviewers as well as step by step guide to review the manuscript in the journal’s website can be found using this link.

If reviewers find such fraud or scientific misconduct, plagiarism, or other unethical behavior in a manuscript, they are asked to make the in-house editor inform immediately.

Further Guidance

For more guidance on writing a critical review, you can consider the below documents:

  1. COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Committee on Publication Ethics. Available online.
  2. ICMJE - Responsibilities in the Submission and Peer-Review Process