Table of Content
Health and Development Journal (JHAD) Guide for Reviewers
Information for Reviewers
Reviewing a manuscript written by a fellow scientist is a privilege. However, it is a time-consuming responsibility. Hence, JHAD’s Editorial Board, authors, and audiences appreciate your willingness to accept this responsibility and your dedication. JHAD adheres to a double-blind peer-review process that is rapid, fair, and ensures a high quality of articles published. In so doing, JHAD needs reviewers who can provide insightful and helpful comments on submitted manuscripts with a turnaround time of about 6 weeks. Maintaining JHAD as a scientific journal of high quality depends on reviewers with a high level of expertise and an ability to be objective, fair, and insightful in their evaluation of manuscripts. We hope that the information provided here will help making your work easier.
Reviewers’ Responsibilities
If JHAD’s Editor-in-Chief has invited you to review a manuscript, please consider the following:
- Reviewing manuscript critically but constructively and preparing detailed comments about the manuscript to help authors improve their work
- Reviewing multiple versions of a manuscript as necessary
- Providing all required information within established deadlines
- Making recommendations to the editor regarding the suitability of the manuscript for publication in the journal
- Declaring to the editor any potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authors or the content of a manuscript you are asked to review
- Reporting possible research misconducts
- Suggesting alternative reviewers in case you cannot review the manuscript for any reasons
- Treating the manuscript as a confidential document
- Not making any use of the work described in the manuscript
- Not communicating directly with authors, if somehow you identify the authors
- Not identifying yourself to authors
- Not passing on the assigned manuscript to another reviewer
- Ensuring that the manuscript is of high quality and original work
- Informing the editor if you find the assigned manuscript is under consideration in any other publication to your knowledge
- Writing review report in English only
- Authoring a commentary for publication related to the reviewed manuscript
What Should be Checked While Reviewing a Manuscript?
- Novelty
- Scientific reliability
- Originality
- Valuable contribution to the science
- Adding new aspects to the existed field of study
- Ethical aspects
- Structure of the article submitted and its relevance to authors’ guidelines
- References provided to substantiate the content
- Grammar, punctuation and spelling
- Scientific misconduct
Peer-Review Process
As part of the peer-review process, JHAD and all its reviewers abide to the confidentiality of manuscripts submitted to journal. In this regard, we do not share information about manuscripts, including whether they have been received and are under review, their content and status in the review process, criticism by reviewers, and their ultimate fate, to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. Any requests from third parties to use manuscripts and reviews for legal proceedings are refused.
Also, reviewers are advised not to keep the manuscript for their personal use and should destroy paper copies of manuscripts and delete electronic copies after submitting their reviews. It should also be noted that, rejected manuscripts are kept in the editorial system as an archive. But, published manuscripts and all their contents regarding copies of the original submission, reviews, revisions, and correspondences are kept in perpetuity for further questions about the work should be raised.
Each manuscript is sent to two or more reviewers in the process of blinded peer review. Peer reviewers will be asked to recommend whether a manuscript should be accepted, revised, or rejected (for further information please visit ICMJE).
How to Review a Manuscript via the JHAD Portal?
As the first step in the review process, we send an invitation email to the reviewers and provide them with the abstract of manuscript. We will then register them via the JHAD portal and a Username and Password will be sent to them automatically.
To complete the review process and to get access to the full text of manuscript, reviewers should login via the JHAD portal then follow the instructions provided in below:
Please go to your profile--Reviewer Section--Pending Assignments--Click on the manuscript ID--Click on Manuscript Evaluation Form--Fill the form/attach the review file--Make the decision (Reviewer Recommendation) as to Accept, Minor Revisions, Major Revisions, Re-Submit or Reject--Push "Send to Editor" button
JHAD Manuscript Evaluation Form
All reviewers are required to complete the JHAD Evaluation Form which contains the following questions:
JHAD’s Ethical Issues
Since JHAD follows COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines in all aspects of publication ethics, please consider the following instructions during the reviewing process.
What to do if you suspect redundant (duplicate) publication?
- Suspected redundant publication in a submitted manuscript (Link)
- Suspected redundant publication in a published article (Link)
What to do if you suspect plagiarism?
- Suspected plagiarism in a submitted manuscript (Link)
- Suspected plagiarism in a published article (Link)
What to do if you suspect fabricated data?
- Suspected fabricated data in a submitted manuscript (Link)
- Suspected fabricated data in a published article (Link)
What to do if you suspect an ethical problem with a submitted manuscript? (Link)