by Dr. Norazlinaliza Salim

As an academician, we have been invited in the email to review an article from a journal. When you have been invited, the first thing to consider is whether or not to review that article. Over the past 5 years, I have reviewed more than 30 articles in my field. Some of them are from Q1 journals such as Pharmaceutics, Journal of Molecular Liquids, Nanomedicine and so on. Actually, there are benefits when reviewing the articles. When reading the articles, we know what others do in research, hence, the review broadens our scope of research. At the same time, I see this review process as a public service. I tried my best to help authors to improve their works by giving useful feedback. Based on my reading and experience, I share a checklist for us as a reviewer that needs to be considered.

Before reviewing

• Is this in your area of expertise, or closely related?
• Can you provide an expert opinion on the article?
• Check for any conflicts of interest.
• Consider whether you will have the time to carry out the review?
• Be honest with yourself. Better to refuse than to accept and continually ask for an extension to the submission deadline.
• Don’t accept a paper to review just because of the name attached to it. Stay objective and approach every paper in the same way.

When reviewing

• After you accept to review, read the referee guidelines, as each journal is different. You should know the formats of the journal and be familiar with the scope/structure of the journal.
• Is this paper technically sound?
• Why is it interesting?
• How could it be made better?

• Does it have any flaws?
• Does it cite the appropriate literature that you’d expect it to cite?
• Give a critical summary of the actual work (have a look at the results, the methodology). Does the data support the conclusions that they make? Is the interpretation of the data reasonable?
• Use your technical expertise (e.g. in chemistry, biology etc.) to evaluate the technical aspects of the manuscript.
• Evaluate what is there, don’t evaluate what isn’t there.
• In your referee report, don’t ask the author to insert references authored by you.
• Ignore English. Leave grammar corrections for the editorial team.

When finish review

• Do a list of comments referring to the section/page numbers/lines.
• Filled out the review form and choose your decision before submission.

Tarikh Input: 14/07/2023 | Kemaskini: 14/07/2023 | hasniah