Reviewers must adhere to the high ethical standards for academic journal reviewers authorised by COPE and CSE (https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-cope.pdf; https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/2-3-reviewer-roles-and-responsibilities).
Reviewers must inform the Editorial Board about the limits of their competency. They need not have expert knowledge of all aspects of the text’s content, yet they should only agree to act as a reviewer when their education and knowledge is sufficient to perform a professional assessment. In other cases, reviewers should refuse to review the suggested text.
Reviewers must give the journal’s Editorial Board advance notice of any possible conflict of interest relating to the articles suggested for their assessment, including instances of earlier collaboration with the author or authors’ collective, direct subordination, financial circumstances or a personal stance on the material to be published.
Reviewers must honour the independence of authors, and provide a correct, objective, constructive, unbiased, argument-based and clear opinion about the article’s quality and scientific value. The reviewer’s comments should highlight the positive aspects of the text under review, present any shortcomings in a constructive manner and point out the parts needing improvement so that the author may improve their manuscript.
Personalised or unfounded criticism from reviewers is not acceptable under any circumstances, and in the event of receiving such offensive personal remarks in the review, it is annulled by the Editorial Board which then organises a new review process of the submitted article.
Reviewers are not obliged to search for potential acts of scientific misconduct, however, they must draw the Editorial Board’s attention to improper scientific misconduct behaviour, such as document falsification, authorship abuse, plagiarism, manipulation of images, unethically performed research, duplicate publication or autoplagiarism, if such becomes apparent during the review process or at any other moment in the publication process. Accusations of acts of scientific misconduct must be based on evidence.
Honest error is not a scientific violation, however, we would ask reviewers to help in identifying errors and informing the Editorial Board of their presence. The journal offers authors and reviewers the possibility for correction.
If reviewers are aware of an earlier scholarly paper that is directly related to the submitted article, they can recommend and suggest to the author the possibility of including its material in their work. However, the reviewer cannot do this for their own benefit. Demands or obligations to include citations from reviewers’ works into papers under review are considered improper behaviour.
Reviewers are strictly prohibited from taking academic, financial, personal or any other possible gain from the review process. Reviewers are strictly prohibited from using material from texts under their review for their own purposes, including their publications and any educational processes.