For Reviewers

Reviewer’s Role
Benefits to Reviewer
Guidelines for Reviewers
Call for Reviewers
Become a Reviewer
Current Reviewers Board

REVIEWER’S ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES

Reviewership: The reviewers are essential part of the peer-review process and are important benchmarks for quality publications. Although sometimes tedious and time consuming, reviewing a manuscript is also a privilege.

Pre-acceptance Obligations: Reviewers are expected to only accept to review the manuscript when the scope of the research/study falls within his/her areas of expertise and that they have sufficient time to submit the report timely.

Conflict of Interest and Willingness: Reviewers shall decline to review the manuscript if there is any conflict of interest, the study is beyond the knowledge or they are unable to submit the evaluation in time. They shall notify the Editors at their earliest convenience and can/shall suggest alternative reviewers. Moreover, we ask reviewers to inform the journal Editor if they hold a conflict of interests that may prejudice the review report, either in a positive or negative way. Reviewers who are invited to assess a manuscript they previously reviewed for another journal should not consider this as a conflict of interest in itself. In this case, reviewers should feel free to let us know if the manuscript has been improved or not compared to the previous version.

Confidentiality and Anonymity: Reviewers should keep the content of the manuscript, including the abstract, confidential. Reviewers must inform the Editorial Office if they would like a student or colleague to complete the review on their behalf. Reviewers should be careful not to reveal their identity to the authors, either in their comments or in metadata for reports submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF format.

Our journals follow double-blinded review in which names of the reviewers are not disclosed to authors, and names and affiliation of author(s) are also kept anonymous. Reviewers shall only access the submitted manuscripts for evaluation of quality and peer-review process. They shall not disclose any contents (full or partial) in any media (electronic or print) before the publication of the material or without prior written consent of the authors. Any idea or concept generated through the submitted manuscript shall not be used for personal benefits or financial gain.

Objectivity: Reviewers are requested to comment on scientific contents, appropriateness of the study and value of the outcome. They are requested to not to assess the manuscripts based on race, gender, geographical origin, religion, and ethnicity and on any other personal or commercial interests.

Meeting Standards: Reviewers shall adhere to the criteria set by the journal. Any comments on competing interests, duplication of publication, unethical practice or dubious act shall be communicated to the Editor in the “Confidential Comments to the Editor” section in the Online Review Report system. In case the Online Review Report system is not functional, the same comments should be sent by email.

Timely Review Reports: The Grassroots Institute aims to provide an efficient and high-quality publishing service to authors and to the scientific community. We ask reviewers to assist by providing review reports in a timely manner. Please contact the Editorial Office if you require an extension to the review deadline.

BENEFITS TO REVIEWERS

Some benefits of being a reviewer are as under:

Being a reviewer opens doors to incredible opportunities. Review services will enhance your knowledge of professional standards; and quickly earn the respect of your peers.
The other potential benefit of being a reviewer is that you will be preferred to be an Editorial Board Member.
The reviewers who need financial support could enjoy discount(or USD 50, whichever is less) to publish their articles in any of the journals published by The Grassroots Institute.
The reviewer will automatically receive an Article Review Certificate as soon as he/she would submit the reviewer comments in the online system. At any point of time after completion of 1 year, a reviewer can ask from Editors a Personalized Reviewer Certificate.
The names of all the reviewers will be displayed in Reviewers’ Board. With the links of names, a comprehensive profile of the reviewer will be displayed on the website.

GUIDELINES FOR REVIEWERS

The Grassroots Institute strives hard towards the spread of scientific knowledge, and the credibility of the published article completely depends upon effective peer reviewing process. Reviewing of manuscript is an important part in the process of publication. Reviewers are asked to make an evaluation and provide recommendations to ensure the scientific quality of the manuscript is on par with our standards. Reviewers are not expected to rewrite a paper. The reviewers are requested to provide authentic, positive review comments and critics for the respective manuscript. A reviewer has to review the articles received from the Editorial Office or the Editor within the specifically mentioned timeline.

Articles are assigned based on the research interests of the reviewer. They can approach the Editorial Office, if the manuscript is beyond their expertise.
After assigning manuscript, reviewer can contact the Editorial Office if there is any problem regarding time or Conflict of Interest. Based on that the reviewer may extend the deadline or cancel the review assignment.
Reviewer should have a look at the assigned manuscript, whether the paper fits within the stated scope of the journal or not. Reviewers should not be biased or partial while reviewing the manuscript.
They should evaluate the manuscript within the provided timeline in order to facilitate timely completion of the review process.
During the review process, if you find that the article does not fit into the scope of interest, you may intimate the Editorial Office.
Reviewers are not entertained to discuss about the article with respective author(s).
We request reviewers not to use the information of the manuscript for their own use and to protect it from any sort of violation.
Criticism should be presented dispassionately, and offensive remarks are not acceptable.
Confidential remarks to be done and you can advise the Editor for acceptance, rejection or modification. Their comments and reviews must never be influenced by the race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, language, origin, gender or any political agencies.

Rating the Manuscript

Please rate the following aspects of the manuscript:

Originality/Novelty: Is the question original and well defined? Do the results provide an advance in current knowledge?
Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses and speculations carefully identified as such?
Quality of Presentation: Is the article written in an appropriate way? Are the data and analyses presented appropriately? Are the highest standards for presentation of the results used?
Scientific Merit: Is the study correctly designed and technically sound? Are the analyses performed with the highest technical standards? Are the data robust enough to draw the conclusions? Are the methods, tools, software, and reagents described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results?
Applicability: Is there an overall benefit from publishing this work? Does the work provide an advance towards the current knowledge? Do the authors have addressed an important long-standing question with smart experiments?
English Level: Is the English language appropriate and understandable?

Manuscripts submitted to our journals should meet the highest standards of publication ethics:

Manuscripts should only report results that have not been submitted or published before, even in part.
Manuscripts must be original and should not reuse text from another source without appropriate citation.
For biological studies, the studies reported should have been carried out in accordance with generally accepted ethical research standards.

If reviewers become aware of any scientific misconduct or fraud, plagiarism or any other unethical behavior related to the manuscript, they should raise these concerns with the Editor immediately.

Overall Recommendation

Please provide an overall recommendation for the publication of the manuscript as follows:

Accept in Present Form: The paper is accepted without any further changes.
Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.
Reconsider after Major Revisions: The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. Usually, only one round of major revisions is allowed. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within specified time limit and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.
Reject: The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and the paper is rejected with an offer or no offer of resubmission to the journal.

Note that your recommendation is visible only to journal Editors, not to the authors.

Review Report (Comments)

Review reports should contain:

Broad comments highlighting areas of strength and weakness. These comments should be specific enough for authors to be able to respond.
Specific comments referring to line numbers, tables or figures. Reviewers need not to comment on formatting issues that do not obscure the meaning of the paper, as these will be addressed by Editors.
Track change mode comments can also be given by the reviewers on MS Word copy of the article.

The journals of The Grassroots Institute follow several standards and guidelines, including those from the COPE, ACAP, TOP (data transparency and openness), PRISMA (systematic reviews and meta-analyses), ARRIVE (reporting of in vivo experiments) and Helsinki Declaration. See the Publication Standards page or contact the Editorial Office for more details. Reviewers familiar with the guidelines should report any concerns they have about their implementation. Reviewers must not recommend citation of work by themselves or close colleagues when it is not clearly necessary to improve the quality of the manuscript under review.

CALL FOR REVIEWERS

Double blind peer review is an essential part in the publication process of our journals. We try to maintain high quality standards for its published papers. Reviewing is often an unseen and unrewarded task. We are striving to recognize the efforts of reviewers in a number of manners. If you are interested in reviewing articles for one or more of our journals, please register on the link “Become a Reviewer”.

The Editors of the respective journal will send you a notification once your application is approved. Manuscripts submitted to our journals are reviewed by at least two experts. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and to provide a recommendation to the Editor on whether a manuscript can be accepted, requires revisions or should be rejected. We ask invited reviewers to:

accept or decline any invitations quickly, based on the manuscript title and abstract.
suggest alternative reviewers if an invitation must be declined.
request an extension in case more time is required to compose a report.

As part of the assessment, reviewers will be asked:

to rate the originality, significance, quality of the presentation, scientific soundness, interest to the readers, overall merit and English level of the manuscript.
to look at the reference list of the manuscript and check if there are inappropriate self-citations.
to provide an overall recommendation for the publication of the manuscript.
to provide a detailed, constructive review report.

The Eligibility for a Reviewer

The reviewer holds no Conflicts of Interest with the authors, including if they have published together in the last five years;
The reviewer holds a PhD (exceptions are made in some fields, e.g., engineering); and
The reviewer should have education, research and publications in the interest areas of the journal (see Aims & Scope of the relevant journal).

BECOME A REVIEWER

Manuscript reviewers are vital to the publication process, and as a reviewer you will gain valuable experience in scientific publishing. We invite you to become a reviewer of our journals. In order to provide a good review, a thoughtful and well-balanced report with suggested improvements for our authors, reviewers must be prepared to invest the necessary time to evaluate the manuscript thoroughly.

If you are interested in being a reviewer for the journal, please join us by submitting your application online. Please submit the application by email. Click the following link:

“Become a Reviewer”