Reviewer guidelines

ALDJ follows stringent peer review procedures for the submissions of suitable manuscripts. The journal will follow a double-blind peer-review process. External reviewers may be chosen from the suggestions provided by the author; however other reviewers may also be appointed as deemed appropriate. The assigned Editorial Board Member reviewer can select at least two reviewers for a particular manuscript depending on the knowledge and experience of the specified reviewers. Reviewers should treat the manuscript as a confidential document. It should not be shown to others or its contents disseminated in any way before publication.

Before accepting or declining a review, please consider whether or not the manuscript is within your area of expertise, whether or not you have a conflict of interest, and whether or not you have the time to invest in a proper review. Please respond, to either accept or decline, as soon as you can.

A review report provides the Editors with feedback on the quality of the manuscript under consideration. It also supplies authors with explicit insight on how to improve their papers to make them suitable for publication in the journal. Although confidential comments to the editors are not relayed to authors, any remarks that may help improve the quality of the manuscript will be forwarded to the authors for their consideration. Reviewers are expected to provide advice on the following points in their review reports (a complete list and guidelines will be provided when you are asked to review a submitted manuscript):

• Is the manuscript written comprehensively enough to be understandable? If not, how could it be improved?
• Have adequate proofs been provided for the declarations?
• Have the authors addressed the previous findings fairly?
• Does the paper offer enough details of its methodology to reproduce the experiments?

The reviewers are expected to provide their reports in a timely fashion (within two weeks) since a prompt review leads to the timely publication of a manuscript which is beneficial not only for the authors but for the scientific community as well.

To start your review, please provide a short summary of the article. This shows the Editor that you have read and comprehended the article. Then, give your primary impressions of the article. Is it novel? Is it interesting? Will it have a significant impact on this area of research? Is it up to the standards of ALDJ?

Specific comments and suggestions will also help the authors improve the manuscript. It is helpful to concentrate on the experimental methodology, the discussion of the results, and the conclusions reached by the authors. Issues such as grammar and formatting will be handled by the editorial staff, so you do not need to spend time on these aspects of the manuscript. To facilitate the revision process, comments about specific items in a reviewed article should be listed according to line number.

When you submit your review report using OJS, you will have the opportunity to provide your recommendation. This will be one of the following:

• Accept Submission (no revisions required; this is quite rare)
• Revisions Required (manuscript will be acceptable after either minor or major revisions; please provide an explanation of the revisions required in your review report)
• Resubmit for Review (manuscript requires major revision, possibly with the addition of new experiments, and the reviewer wishes to evaluate the revised version)
• Resubmit Elsewhere (manuscript is technically sound, but limited in scope or a better fit for a different journal)
• Decline Submission (manuscript is flawed in such a way that it should not be published)
• See Comments (for any other recommendation that does not fit any of the above categories)

If you suspect plagiarism, fraud, or any other type of scientific misconduct, please let the Editor know. Please provide as much detail as possible in these cases, e.g., citations of previously published material. After considering all review reports, the Editor will ultimately determine the fate of a manuscript. Reviewers will be notified by OJS when the Editor has made a decision. 

Wiley, PLOS and Taylor Francis published useful reviewer guides, we recommend scholars who are new to the reviewing process to take a look at them (Wiley reviewer guide, PLOS reviewer guide, Taylor Francis reviewer guide).

To become a reviewer: 

If you would like to be considered as a reviewer for ALDJ please contact us!