Guidelines for Reviewers

We ask reviewers to declare any potential conflicts of interest and email the journal Editorial Office if they are unsure if something constitutes a potential conflict of interest. Possible conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Reviewer works in the same institute as one of the authors;
• Reviewer is a co-author, collaborator, joint grant holder, or has any other academic link, with any of the authors within the past three years;
• Reviewer has a close personal relationship, rivalry or antipathy to any of the authors;
• Reviewer may in any way gain or lose financially from publication of the paper;
• Reviewer has any other non-financial conflicts of interest (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other) with any of the authors.

Reviewers should disclose any conflicts of interest that may be perceived as bias for or against the paper or authors.

Please kindly note that if reviewers are asked to assess a manuscript they previously reviewed for another journal, this is not considered to be a conflict of interest. In this case, reviewers should feel free to let the Editorial Office know if the manuscript has been improved or not compared to the previous version.

Reviewers are also recommended to read the relevant descriptions in the Ethical Guidelines For Peer Reviewers by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).