Instructions for Reviewers

Benefits of JENRS Volunteer Reviewers

Peer review is an essential part in the publication process, ensuring that JENRS maintains high quality standards for its published papers. Reviewing is often an unseen and unrewarded task. We are striving to recognize the efforts of reviewers.

When reviewing for JENRS journals you:

Receive a discount voucher of 5 USD (for each approved review) entitling you to a reduction in the article processing charge (APC) of a future submission to any JENRS. Vouchers are linked to your email address and can be applied online at submission or any time before acceptance. Note that vouchers cannot be used after an invoice has been issued. If your article is rejected the voucher can be reused for your next submission.
Reviewers are paid 5 USD for each approved review. After a minimum of 5 approved reviews, reviewers can withdraw the amount they acquired via Bank Transfer or Paypal. Reviewer is requested to send an email to billing@jenrs.com for withdrawal.
You are eligible to propose a special issue for JENRS. Follow the link to submit your proposal.
After reviewing more than 10 papers for JENRS, you are able to apply for associate editor.
During manuscript submission to JENRS, you should mention the reviewer code in the cover letter section. Once our online system confirmed your code with your registered email address, your paper will be put on express tracking which speeds up the review process for your manuscript.
Receive a personalized reviewer certificate.
Are included in the journal’s annual acknowledgment of reviewers.
Are considered for the journal’s outstanding reviewer award.
Can build your profile on Publons and have your reviewing activity automatically added for participating journals. Publons profiles can also be integrated with ORCID.

Invitation to Join JENRS Volunteer Reviewer Database

If you are interested in reviewing articles for one or more of our journals, please register your contact details, institutional affiliation, a short CV, and 5-6 keywords in line with your expertise at the following page.

The managing editor will send you a notification once approved.

Prospective reviewers may also be interested in the Publons Academy, which provides training in how to conduct peer review.

Invitation to Review

Manuscripts submitted to JENRS journals are reviewed by at least three experts. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and to provide a recommendation to the external 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;
let us know if anyone else, such as a student, will participate in writing the review.

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;

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.

JENRS operate double blind peer review. 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.

JENRS offer authors the possibility to publish review reports with their paper and for reviewers to sign their open review reports, however this will only be done at publication with your express permission. If this is the case, it will be noted in the message inviting you to review. In all other cases, review reports are considered confidential and will only be disclosed with the explicit permission of the reviewer.

Note that, as the reviewer, you will have access to other reviewers’ reports via the online submission system after you have submitted your report.

Timely Review Reports

JENRS 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.

Peer-Review and Editorial Procedure

All manuscripts sent for publication in our journals are strictly and thoroughly peer-reviewed by experts (this includes research and review articles, spontaneous submissions, and invited papers). The Managing Editor of the journal will perform an initial check of the manuscript’s suitability upon receipt. The Editorial Office will then organize the peer-review process performed by independent experts and collect at least three review reports per manuscript. We ask our authors for adequate revisions (with a second round of peer-review if necessary) before a final decision is made. The final decision is made by the academic editor (usually the Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board Member of a journal or the Guest Editor of a Special Issue). Accepted articles are copy-edited and English-edited.

Overall Recommendation

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

Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper is accepted in its current form and encourages the authors to incorporate the comments of reviewers (if any) during their camera-ready submission.
Accept Subject to 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 a suitable time frame, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.
Reject and Encourage Resubmission: If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further experiments have been conducted.
Reject: The article has serious flaws, and/or makes no original significant contribution. No offer of resubmission to the journal is provided.

Review Report

We have listed some general instructions regarding the review report for your consideration. Please find these below.

To begin with, please consider the following guidelines:

Read the whole article as well as the supplementary material, if there is any, paying close attention to the figures, tables, data and methods.
Your report should critically analyze the article as a whole but also specific sections and the key concepts presented in the article.
Please ensure your comments are detailed so that the authors may better understand and address the points you raise.
Reviewers must not recommend excessive citation of their work (self-citations), another author’s work (honorary citations) or articles from the journal where the manuscript was submitted as a means of increasing the citations of the reviewer/authors/journal. You can provide references as needed, but they must clearly improve the quality of the manuscript under review.
Please maintain a neutral tone and focus on providing constructive criticism that will help the authors improve their work. Derogatory comments will not be tolerated.

Review reports should contain the following:

A brief summary (one short paragraph) outlining the aim of the paper, its main contributions and strengths.
General concept comments
Article: highlighting areas of weakness, the testability of the hypothesis, methodological inaccuracies, missing controls, etc.
Review: commenting on the completeness of the review topic covered, the relevance of the review topic, the gap in knowledge identified, the appropriateness of references, etc.
These comments are focused on the scientific content of the manuscript and should be specific enough for the authors to be able to respond.
Specific comments referring to line numbers, tables or figures that point out inaccuracies within the text or sentences that are unclear. These comments should also focus on the scientific content and not on spelling, formatting or English language problems, as these can be addressed at a later stage by our internal staff.