Reviewer Guidelines

Journal of Science and Technology (JST) · e-ISSN 2456-5660 · published by Longman Publishers

Thank you for reviewing for JST. Peer review is the journal's quality control, and the editors decide on the strength of the reports they receive. These guidelines say what the journal asks of a reviewer, how to write a report that helps the editor and the authors, and the rules of conduct that apply. They follow the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

1. Becoming a reviewer

Register on the journal website (or log in), open your profile, tick the Reviewer role and enter your areas of expertise. Editors invite reviewers according to the subject of each manuscript; there is no application to a panel. Reviewing is unpaid. On request, the editorial office confirms in writing the reviews you have completed for the journal.

2. Accepting or declining an invitation

An invitation gives the manuscript's title and abstract. Please respond within five days. Decline if the manuscript is outside your expertise, if you cannot deliver the review by the deadline, or if you have a conflict of interest (section 5). If you decline, suggesting another qualified reviewer is a great help. Do not accept an invitation and pass the manuscript to someone else; a colleague or student may take part only with the editor's prior agreement, and is then named in the report.

3. Time

The deadline for a review is three weeks (21 days) from acceptance of the invitation. If you need longer, tell the editor before the deadline; a short extension is normally given. Reviews of revised manuscripts are asked for within two weeks. The journal aims to send authors a first editorial decision within six to eight weeks of submission, which is only possible when reviews arrive on time.

4. Confidentiality and double-blind review

  • The manuscript and everything about it are confidential. Do not show it to or discuss it with anyone, do not cite it, and do not use its content, data or ideas in your own work before it is published.
  • Review at JST is double-blind. Do not try to identify the authors, and do not reveal your identity to them — in the report, in the name of an annotated file, or in the file's document properties (remove your name from the file's metadata before uploading it).
  • Do not upload the manuscript, or any part of it, to a public generative AI tool. That breaches confidentiality and the double-blind system. The report must be your own assessment; if you cannot review the manuscript without such tools, decline the invitation (see the Gen AI Policy).
  • Do not contact the authors directly at any stage. All communication goes through the editor.

5. Conflicts of interest

Decline the invitation if you have, or a reasonable observer might think you have, an interest in the outcome: a current or recent collaboration or co-authorship with an author; the same institution or department; a personal relationship; a financial interest in the work or a competing product; a direct competition with the work; or a strong prior opinion about the authors. If a conflict becomes apparent only after you have started, stop and tell the editor. Being an expert who has published on the same topic is not, by itself, a conflict.

6. What to assess

  • Scope and contribution. Does the manuscript fall within the journal's Aims & Scope, and does it add something new — a finding, a method, a synthesis — to its field?
  • Soundness. Are the design, methods, materials, sample and statistics appropriate and described in enough detail to be reproduced? Do the data support the results, and the results the conclusions? Are limitations acknowledged?
  • Abstract and title. Does the abstract state the aim, method, main results and conclusion accurately, so that a reader who sees only the abstract is not misled?
  • Presentation. Is the manuscript organised and readable in clear English? Are figures and tables necessary, legible and correctly labelled, and do they agree with the text?
  • Literature. Is the relevant work cited, fairly represented and current? Point out important work that is missing; do not ask for citations of your own work unless they are essential to the argument.
  • Ethics and declarations. Where the work involved people, human material or animals, are the ethics approval and consent statements present (see Research Ethics)? Are competing interests, funding, data availability and any use of generative AI declared? Does the data availability statement match what the paper reports?
  • Integrity. Tell the editor, in the confidential comments, of any suspicion of plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication, fabricated or manipulated data or images, undisclosed conflicts, or authorship problems, with the reasons for your suspicion. Do not investigate it yourself or raise it with the authors; the editor handles it under the Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.

7. Writing the report

A useful report lets the editor decide and lets the authors improve the manuscript. Please structure it as follows:

  1. Summary — two or three sentences on what the manuscript does and what it claims, in your own words. This shows the authors and the editor how the work was understood.
  2. Overall assessment — its main strengths and main weaknesses, and whether the conclusions are supported.
  3. Major points — numbered comments on anything that must be addressed before the manuscript could be published: flaws in design, analysis or interpretation; missing controls or data; overstated conclusions; ethical or reporting gaps. Say for each what is wrong and what would resolve it.
  4. Minor points — numbered comments on clarity, presentation, figures, tables, references, language and typographical errors, with page or line numbers.
  5. Recommendation — one of the options in the review form.

Write for the authors as you would wish to be written to: specific, evidence-based, courteous and free of personal remarks. Criticise the work, never the person. A short report that says "fine" or "reject" without reasons is returned by the editor. Comments for the editor alone — including any integrity concern — go in the separate "confidential comments to the editor" box, not in the comments the authors will see.

8. Recommendations

The review form offers the journal's four decisions. In OJS they appear as: Accept Submission (accept as it stands); Revisions Required (minor revisions — the editor can check them without further review); Resubmit for Review (major revisions — the revised manuscript comes back to the reviewers); Decline Submission (reject). The recommendation should follow from the report: a manuscript with unresolved major points is not "accept with minor revisions". The editor, not the reviewer, takes the final decision, weighing all the reports.

9. Reviewing a revised manuscript

When a revised manuscript returns to you, check the authors' point-by-point response against your earlier comments. Say which points are resolved and which are not, and why. Do not raise new major points that could have been made in the first review unless the revision itself created them.

10. Submitting the review

Reviews are submitted through the journal's website: log in, open the manuscript under Reviews, complete the review form and, if you annotated the manuscript file, upload it without your name in the file name or document properties. Reviews sent by e-mail cannot be attached to the record and are not accepted. The journal thanks every reviewer by e-mail when the review is received.

11. Reviewer conduct

Breaches of confidentiality, use of a manuscript's content, undisclosed conflicts of interest, delegating a review without permission, or a report written with a generative AI tool are treated as reviewer misconduct under the Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement; the journal may remove the reviewer from its list and, where serious, inform the reviewer's institution.

12. Contact

Questions about a review in progress go to the handling editor through the review page; general questions to editor@jst.org.in.