Peer-review criteria

The reviewers have the responsibility to evaluate submitted manuscripts critically but constructively. They are expected to make an objective, impartial evaluation of scientific merits of the articles and are asked to comment on the following aspects of submitted manuscripts:

novelty and originality of the work
broad interest to the community of researchers
significance to the field
study design and clarity
rigorous methodology (including analytical and statistical methods)
conceptual or methodological advances described
impact of the work
substantial evidence supporting claims and conclusions
the strength of the conclusions

An important responsibility of the reviewer is to make recommendations to the editor regarding the suitability of the manuscript for publication in RJLabM. Reviewers are asked to write some narrative comments about the manuscript that support their recommendation to the editor regarding acceptance or rejection.

Reviewers have to declare to the editor any potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authors and to the content of a manuscript they are asked to review, and should then decline to review the manuscript. Any manuscript sent for peer review is a confidential document.

Once all reviews have been received and considered by the Editor, final decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief. Several types of decisions are possible:

Accept without revision
Minor revision
Major revision
Accept after revision
Reject

The major rejection criteria are:

The subject matter is outside the scope of the journal or broad interest to the community of readers
A manuscript on the same topic is just about to be published
Lack of novelty or of the impact and originality of the work
Methodology (including analytical and statistical methods) is not rigorous (study design, the type of sampling and applied methods are not scientifically correct)
The quality of the manuscript is poor
The study was not approved by a competent ethics committee
The criteria for the submission of manuscripts are not met

The main reviewer's questions can be downloaded here.