Refereeing is an essential component in promoting excellence in research, authorship, and the dissemination of knowledge. Referees help the Editors to decide which papers to publish. In return they gain insight into current thinking, trends and the results of research before these come into the public domain.
Reviewers should spend the appropriate and necessary time to provide the Editors and the authors a thorough and unbiased review.
It is the reviewer’s responsibility to ensure that only high-quality papers are published, and that the author(s) are protected from putting poor work into print. From this perspective, the reviewer should not only read the papers thoroughly to find errors but should also make recommendations to the author(s) as to how the paper might be improved.
Please strive to maintain a positive, impartial attitude toward the manuscript under review.
Conflict of interest
Before reviewing a paper, the reviewer should ensure that there is no conflict of interest in his/her reviewing the paper.
(Text adapted with permission from the Guidelines for Editorial Advisors for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice Journal.)
Here are the general guidelines for peer reviewers suggested by Committee on Publication Ethics, and following is a list of peer review guidelines practised by scholarly journals:
Ethical guidelines for reviewers for Science Magazine
Peer review guidelines for The Mental Health Clinician
Reviewers Guidelines by JScholar