Peer Review protocol

Before peer reviewing, please take a look at the review protocol used by SaintScience across its publications

Accessing the manuscript

On accepting the offer, you will receive an email saying that ‘x shared a folder with you’. On opening the folder, you will find the article manuscript. Please download this document and save it as ‘article-name-matric_no.docx’. For example, ‘reactive oxygen species.docx’ would be saved as ‘reactive oxygen species-100000000.docx’
You will conduct all your comments in this one document. It is key that the original article is not edited but downloaded and saved separately.

Commenting

When commenting, please ensure that your name is not visible in the comments, since the author will receive a copy of your review. To do this, enable track changes in the review menu on Word. Then, click on the dialogue box launcher in the bottom right corner of the ‘Tracking’ box. You will have the option to ‘Change User Name…’. This will direct you to ‘Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office.
Here, the username can be changed to your matriculation number and the initials left blank. You can uncheck the ‘always use these values’ to ensure that it does not interfere with your other documents

Commenting style

Please always be constructive in your comments. When a point is made well, or you are impressed with the findings, figures or work, please mention this. This will make authors more receptive to criticism. Further, we should always praise good science in tandem with pointing out sources of improvement.

Please be brief when making a comment. Comments should be concise and pithy. The comment should flag the problem, explain briefly why it is problematic and propose a change. Any citations in the comment should be made at the end of the comment
While being brief, please make sure the comments fully explain the problem such that it is clear from the author’s perspective what must be modified.

Flagging

There are various substantive problems you might encounter when reviewing an article. When making a comment, you should also highlight the degree of severity of the problem following the recommendations in the table below. All comments should begin with the severity code (1-4), followed by the rest of the comment. This is your opportunity to exercise academic and scientific judgement, so please do not feel wary of assigning codes 3-4 if you deem it necessary. We trust your judgement! Please contact your SME if you’re unsure about assigning codes.

Code	Steps the reviewer should take	Features
1 – minor problem, minimal revision needed	The errors are minor and do not constitute immediate concern. The rest of the article can be reviewed	Rare or occasional factual errors and ambiguous language Imprecise or unnecessary use of technical language or jargon Citation format and occasional lack of citations which can be found easily following a search of literature
2 – More serious problem, more thorough revision needed	The errors are more significant but not sufficient to constitute immediate concern or termination of review. The rest of the article can still be reviewed	Errors in argument structure or flaws in reasoning that persist throughout a greater part of the article If a review article, omissions of relevant literature that you feel should be added to the article Reporting errors –errors are made when reporting the findings of past literature or discoveries Flaws in the figure or legend. However, unclear figure legends should be considered code 1 Presence of irrelevant material
3 –Serious or immediate revision required, recommend sending back immediately to author	A fundamental problem in the structure, methods or results is found, or gross inaccuracies in knowledge. The reviewer should finish reviewing the article but contact their SME to notify them of their concern	Results do not fully follow from methods or contain major deviations from the methods Conclusions are irrelevant and do not link to the aims made in the introduction, or fail to follow from the results. In comment/opinion pieces, voice is too opinionated and consistency lacks substantive citation to support views
4 –Unacceptable level of revision required, recommend rejection	If the article is found to have any plagiarism, major and irreversible errors in methods, results or knowledge, the peer reviewer should stop reviewing the article and contact the SME immediately. Their current documentshould also be uploaded. This event should be rare	Document fails to follow the University of St Andrew’s Good Academic Policy (GAP). Hence, code 4 is given to articles with plagiarised material and derogatory or discriminatory language Irretrievable problems with methods and results. For example, the methods are insufficient for answering the question, or the article contains extensive irrelevant material Major argument flaws and poor-quality material

Reviewer’s Report

The Reviewer’s Report (RP) is a summary (<150 words) made by the reviewer, recapitulating the main points they have made in the comments. They underline the strengths of the article in addition to sources of improvement. The RP should be written in the same document, before the first page of the manuscript. If necessary, a bibliography (in IEEE format) can be added to the end of the report. On Word, you can use ‘Page Break’ to add a page before Page 1. The report ends with a recommendation. Here, you could recommend four outcomes based on your perception of the article quality:

The article only requires minor revisions (mainly code 1 but a few code 2s) but is otherwise nearly publication worthy
While more serious revisions are needed by the author, the article is overall quite strong and publication-worthy once all changes have been made (more code 2s than 1)
The article carries a few major problems that require immediate addressing by the author before proceeding (a few code 3s). Recommend sending the article back immediately to the author for correction
The article is unacceptable. Recommend rejection of the article

Uploading

When complete, the document should be uploaded to the same folder where the manuscript was initially downloaded. Please also contact the SME notifying them that you have now submitted your review. They will thank you and inform you of whether further review will be required after liaising with the author. If you have assigned code 4, then please upload the document to the same folder and contact the SME.