Peer Review Policy

1. Peer Review and editorial process

Peer review is an important part of the publication process, ensuring that Scilight maintains the highest quality standards for the papers it publishes.

All journals operate a single anonymized peer review whereby the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author. When manuscripts have been submitted successfully, the corresponding author will receive an acknowledgment informing him or her of the successful submission of the manuscript. The manuscript will be checked for plagiarism using the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text by the in-house editor.

After that, the editor-in-chief of the journal will conduct an initial review of the manuscript and an initial decision will be made: to be peer-reviewed or reject. Then appropriate academic editors (deputy editors, section editors, associate editors) will be notified of submissions and invite reviewers. At least two external experts are invited for the review of one paper.  In the continuation of the peer review process, the editorial office will organize peer review by independent experts and collect at least two review reports per manuscript. Based on the review results, the editor-in-chief or academic editor will make the first decision as follows:  a) Accept in the current version; b) Accept after Minor revision; c) Reconsider after Major revision; d) Reject. 

2. Reviewers’ Profile and Responsibilities

The role of reviewers is critical and has a major responsibility for ensuring the integrity of the academic record. Each reviewer is expected to conduct manuscript evaluations in a timely, transparent, and ethical manner.

Reviewers should meet the following criteria:

  • become an active researcher;
  • possess relevant experience with an official and recognized affiliation (university or institute) and a proven publication record in the field of submitted papers (Scopus, ORCID);
  • no conflicts of interest with the authors, including whether they have published together in the past five years.

Scilight strives to conduct rigorous peer review to ensure a thorough evaluation of every manuscript - an essential task for our reviewers. Reviewers who accept to review a manuscript are expected to:

  • Possess the necessary expertise to judge the scientific quality of a manuscript;
  • Provide quality review reports and remain responsive throughout the peer review process;
  • Maintain professional and ethical standards.

3. General Guidelines for Reviewers

3.1 Invitation to Review

Manuscripts submitted to Scilight journals are reviewed by at least two experts, who may be volunteer reviewers, reviewer board members, or reviewers suggested by the academic editor during the preliminary check. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and make recommendations to external editors as to whether the manuscript should be accepted, revised, or rejected.

We ask invited reviewers to:

  • accept or decline any invitation as soon as possible (according to the manuscript title and abstract);
  • recommend alternative reviewers if an invitation must be declined;
  • apply for an extension as soon as possible if more time is required to provide a comprehensive report.

3.2 Potential Conflicts of Interest

If a reviewer is unsure whether something constitutes a potential conflict of interest, we ask the reviewer to declare any potential conflict of interest and email it to the journal editorial office. Possible conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Reviewer works in the same institute as one of the authors;
  • Reviewer is a co-author, collaborator, co-founder, or has any other academic ties to any of the authors within the past five years;
  • Reviewer has a close personal relationship with, rivalry with, or aversion to any of the authors;
  • Reviewer may gain or lose financially from the publication of the paper in any way;
  • Reviewer has any other non-financial conflict of interest (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial, or any other) with any of the authors.

Reviewers should disclose any conflicts of interest that may be seen as supporting or opposing the paper or the authors.

Note that if reviewers are asked to evaluate manuscripts they previously reviewed for other journals, this is not considered to be a conflict of interest. In this case, reviewers are encouraged to let the Editorial Office know whether the manuscript has been improved or not compared to previous versions.

3.3 Declaration of Confidentiality

Scilight journals are peer-reviewed in a single-blind manner. Reviewers should keep the content of the manuscript, including the abstract, confidential until the article is published. Reviewers should also be careful not to reveal their identities to authors in their comments or in the metadata of reports submitted in Microsoft Word, PDF, or Latex format. Reviewers must notify the Editorial Office if they want colleagues to complete reviews on their behalf.

3.4 Review Reports

We've listed some general instructions about review reports below for your consideration.

Please consider the following guidelines:

  • Read the full text as well as supplementary material, if any, paying close attention to figures, tables, data, and methods.
  • Your report should critically analyze the entire article, but also the specific sections and key concepts presented in the article.
  • Please make sure your comments are detailed so that the author can properly understand and address the points you make.
  • Reviewers should not recommend work cited by themselves, close colleagues, other authors, or journals when it is not clearly necessary to improve review quality.
  • Reviewers must not suggest excessive citations of their work (self-citation), the work of other authors (honorary citations), or articles in submitting journals to increase reviewer/author/journal citations. You can provide references as needed, but they must significantly improve the quality of the manuscript being reviewed.
  • Please maintain a neutral tone and focus on providing constructive criticism that will help authors improve their work. Derogatory comments are not tolerated.

For further guidance on writing critical reviews, please refer to the following documents:

  • COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Committee on Publication Ethics. (https://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf)
  • Hames, I. Peer Review and Manuscript Management in Scientific Journals: Guidelines for Good Practice. Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford, UK, 2007.
  • Writing a journal article review. Australian National University: Canberra, Australia, 2010. (https://www.anu.edu.au/students/academic-skills/writing-assessment)
  • Golash-Boza, T. How to write a peer review for an academic journal: Six steps from start to finish. (http://www.phd2published.com/2012/05/09/how-to-write-a-peer-review-for-an-academic-journal-six-steps-from-start-to-finish-by-tanya-golash-boza/)

Review reports should contain the following:

  • A short summary, (a small paragraph) outlining the purpose of the paper, its main contributions and strengths.
  • General concept comments

Article: Emphasizes weaknesses, testability of assumptions, methodological inaccuracies, missing controls, etc.

Review: Completeness of review topics covered by review, the relevance of review topics, identified knowledge gaps, appropriateness of references, etc.

These comments focus on the scientific content of the manuscript and should be specific enough to allow the authors to respond.

  • Specific comments, Concrete notes are line numbers, tables, or figures in sentences that point out inaccuracies in the text or unclear sentences. These reviews should also focus on scientific content rather than spelling, formatting or English language issues, as our internal staff can address these issues at a later stage.

General questions to help guide your review report for research articles:

  • Is the manuscript clear, relevant to the field, and presented in a well-structured manner?
  • Are the cited references mostly recent publications (within the past 5 years) and relevant? Does it contain too many self-citations?
  • Is the manuscript scientifically sound and is the experimental design suitable for testing hypotheses?
  • Are the results of the manuscript reproducible based on the details given in the Methods section?
  • Are figures/tables/images/schemes appropriate? Are they displaying the data correctly? Are they easy to explain and understand? Are data interpretations appropriate and consistent throughout the manuscript? Please provide details about statistical analysis or data obtained from a specific database.
  • Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented?
  • Please evaluate the ethics statement and data availability statement to ensure they are adequate.

General questions to help guide your review report for review articles:

  • Is the review clear, comprehensive and relevant to the field? Have knowledge gaps been identified?
  • Was a similar review been published recently, and if so, is the current review still relevant and of interest to the scientific community?
  • Are the cited references mostly recent publications (within the past 5 years) and relevant? Are relevant references omitted? Does it contain too many self-citations?
  • Are the statements and conclusions drawn coherent and supported by the citations listed?
  • Are figures/tables/images/schemes appropriate? Are they displaying the data correctly? Are they easy to explain and understand?

Academic editors will grade your review report from a scientific standpoint and general usefulness for improving the manuscript. The overall grading results will be used as a reference for the potential promotion of Reviewer Board Members, Volunteer Reviewer Board members, and regular Reviewers.

3.5 Rating the Manuscript

During the review process, please rate the following areas:

  • Novelty: Is the question original and well-defined? Do the results provide an advance in current knowledge?
  • Scope: Is the work within the scope of the journal?
  • Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses carefully identified as such?
  • Quality: Is the article written in an appropriate way? Are the data and analytics presented correctly? Are the highest standards of presentation of results used?
  • Scientific Soundness: Is the study properly designed and technically sound? Is the analysis carried out according to the highest technical standards? Are the data enough to draw conclusions? Are methods, tools, software, and reagents described in sufficient detail to allow other researchers to reproduce the results? Is the raw data available and correct (if applicable)?
  • Interest to the Readers: Are these conclusions interesting to readers of the journal? Will the paper appeal to a broad audience, or will only a few be interested?
  • Overall Merit: Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does this work advance current knowledge? Did the authors address a long-standing and important question with smart experiments? Did the authors present negative results for valid scientific hypotheses?
  • English Level: Is the language appropriate and easy to understand?

If reviewers become aware of any scientific misconduct or fraud, plagiarism, or any other unethical conduct in relation to the manuscript, they should immediately raise these concerns with the internal editor.

3.6 Overall Recommendation

Please provide an overall recommendation for the next processing stage of the manuscript as follows:

  • Accept in Present Form: The paper can be accepted without any further changes.
  • Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper can be acceptable in principle after revision according to the reviewer's comments.
  • Reconsider after Major Revisions: Acceptance of the manuscript will be contingent on revision. If part of the reviewer's comments cannot be revised, the author needs to reply or refute point-by-point. Typically, only one round of major revision is allowed.
  • Reject: The article has serious flaws, lacks of original contribution, and it may be rejected without an offer of resubmission to the journal.

Note that your recommendations are only visible to journal editors, not authors. Decisions on revision, acceptance, or rejection must always be well-founded.

4. Reviewers’ Benefits

Editors and journals usually openly acknowledge their reviewers by publishing a “Thank you” list annually.