Information for New and Current Reviewers
The Ethiopian Journal of Reproductive Health (EJRH) takes the Obstetrics and Gynecology Journal as a role model in some areas of processing manuscripts before publication. Below is well detailed information our Journal has adopted by making necessary changes.
If you are interested in reviewing for Ethiopian Journal of Reproductive Health (EJRH) and are visiting this page for the first time--welcome! We hope you find this information useful. Please also be sure to send us your interest to serve our Journal as a reviewer, attaching your CV and specific topics of interest via email (ejrh2017@gmail.com).*
If you are a current reviewer and looking for more information, we welcome you as well, and thank you for serving as a peer reviewer for Ethiopian Journal of Reproductive Health (EJRH). Reviewers play an essential but generally underappreciated role in scientific publishing. A skillful reviewer is the main assurance that new publications are reliable and based on sound empirical evidence, and so a journal is only as good as its reviewers.
The peer-review process has been used in scientific and medical publishing for almost two centuries. It is the process whereby the community of scientists vets and accepts or rejects the validity and importance of new manuscripts submitted for publication. Reviewers also commonly provide feedback that helps the authors improve their manuscripts. The peer-review process has much strength and some weaknesses.
Responsibilities of a Reviewer:
The World Association of Medical Editors (http://www.wame.org) has educational materials online for editors, and these include a list of reviewer responsibilities:
List modified from: World Association of Medical Editors. Syllabus for prospective and newly appointed editors. Reviewers—their responsibilities, selection, and rewards. Available at: http://www.wame.org/about/syllabus-for-prospective-and-newly-appointed#Reviewers. Retrieved June 21, 2017.
We also strongly encourage all of the journal’s reviewers to read:
Transparent Peer Review:
Ethiopian Journal of Reproductive Health (EJRH) employs a double-blind peer-review process in which the authors do not know the identity of the reviewers and the reviewers do not the identity of the authors either.
Completing Your Review:
During the reviewer registration process in Editorial Manager, you were asked to select topics in which you have expertise so that we can appropriately direct articles to you for review. Peer reviewers should be knowledgeable about the topic or methods used in the manuscript, and if you find that we’ve incorrectly assigned a paper to you, please decline the review and let us know why in your comments.
As a content expert, we are asking you to put the work into context and perspective. Does the work offer new or important confirmatory information about a clinically relevant topic? The journal values positive studies, negative studies, and studies that refute previously published findings.
When you receive a request to review a paper, there are several steps that we recommend you take.*
In the event that you are no longer available to complete a review you have already accepted, please contact the editorial office to have the assignment removed from your account.
For additional perspectives on reviewing, Allen and Ho present an informative and succinct overview about the importance of the peer reviewer in the manuscript submission process in their article published in Circulation: Heart Failure. This article provides practical step-by-step guidelines for reviewers considering whether to accept an invitation to review, a template for structuring reviewer comments to the author, and tips for reviewers about what to prioritize before they submit their comments to a journal.
Comments to the Authors:
This is the section where you will provide constructive feedback to the authors about their research and manuscript. Please begin your feedback with a general comment that indicates that you understood the article you are reviewing. An example is: “This is a nested cohort study performed at three institutions testing the hypothesis that oral contraceptive pill use decreases the risk of acne.” Your review should move from the general to the specific and should be focused and practical.
Keep in mind that an author needs to respond specifically to criticism, so you should confine your evaluation to a functional change that will improve the manuscript whether accepted or not. (Many rejected manuscripts are eventually published in other journals.) It is most helpful to the author if you follow these guidelines:
Some examples of constructive Comments to the Authors include:
Comments to the Editors:
The “Comments to the Editors” section is optional, but it provides reviewers the opportunity to give a confidential bottom-line assessment of the manuscript. These comments should be brief (a few sentences is ideal) and can be fairly informal and to the point. You do not need to copy the “Comments to Authors” into the “Comments to Editors” section, as the editors will see both.
These comments allow you an opportunity to refocus on what you think the disposition of a manuscript should be. Some basic questions the editors ask themselves when considering the disposition of a manuscript are:
The Comments to the Editor is also the section of the review where you would comment on any ethical concerns you have with the manuscript. These might include suspected plagiarism (although for all accepted papers, we do an online plagiarism screen), fraud, or patient confidentiality breeches.
Some examples of useful “Comments to Editors” are:
What Qualities Make a Review Exceptional?
The overall criteria for an exceptional review are described in our Reviewer Grading Scale, and are as follows:
After You’ve Submitted Your Review:
Your work as a reviewer shouldn’t stop after submitting the review. Take the time to read and consider the other reviews when a final decision is made by the editors. (You’ll receive a copy of the final decision notification via e-mail. You can also log-in to Editorial Manager to follow up on the progress of the particular manuscript. Reading the other reviews can give you insight into the manuscript itself (and things you might have missed), and it can also make you a better reviewer. Most importantly, if the article is ultimately published, read the published version. This way, you can get a sense of how your contribution has benefited the scientific literature as a whole.
Other Resources:
In addition to the materials in the Appendix, we recommend consulting the following sources:
Finally, the following offer free training for peer reviewers: