Reviewer Guidelines

Reviewer Guidelines

Applies to: all 6 EP Journals Group journals.
Effective: 1 May 2026, version 1.0.

This page tells you, the peer reviewer at Journal of Natural Science Research and Review, what we ask of you when you accept a review invitation. The standards described here apply to every review we commission, on every article type, regardless of the reviewer's seniority. They reflect the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers and our own operational practice.

If you have not reviewed for Journal of Natural Science Research and Review before, please read this page once before accepting your first invitation. If you have, treat this as the standing reference for what we expect.

What we ask of reviewers

When you accept a review invitation from a Section Editor at Journal of Natural Science Research and Review, you are agreeing to:

  • Read the manuscript yourself, in full. Do not delegate the review to a graduate student, lab member, or colleague without first asking the Section Editor's permission.
  • Submit a written review by the agreed deadline (typically 21 days; 14 days for short communications and commentaries).
  • Treat the manuscript and its contents as confidential until publication. Do not discuss it, share it, post excerpts, or paste any part of it into a generative AI service.
  • Disclose any conflict of interest before you begin the review. If a conflict emerges as you read, withdraw and tell the editor.
  • Conduct the review in good faith. Reviews are not opportunities to settle academic scores, demand citation of your own work, or impose stylistic preferences. They are opportunities to evaluate scholarly merit.

If after starting a review you realise you cannot complete it on time or in full, tell the Section Editor immediately. We would rather have an early withdrawal than a late or rushed review.

What to evaluate

Your review should address the following, in roughly this order. Not every item applies to every manuscript — a methodology paper has different criteria from a review article — so use judgement.

1. Significance and originality. Does the manuscript make a contribution that adds to what is known? Is the contribution clearly stated? Does the introduction establish the gap the paper fills?

2. Methods. For empirical work: are the methods appropriate to the question, reported with enough specificity for evaluation, and free of obvious errors? For theoretical or conceptual work: are the arguments sound, the definitions clear, and the engagement with existing literature accurate?

3. Results. Are the results clearly presented? Do the figures and tables show what the text describes? Are statistical procedures applied correctly? Are negative or unexpected findings acknowledged?

4. Discussion and interpretation. Do the conclusions follow from the results? Are limitations honestly acknowledged? Are alternative interpretations considered?

5. Reproducibility. Has the author deposited data, code, or materials where applicable? If not, is the explanation adequate? See our Reproducibility Policy for the standard we hold authors to.

6. Ethics and integrity. Are ethics statements present and credible? Are conflict-of-interest disclosures made? Has AI use been disclosed where applicable?

7. Clarity of writing. Is the manuscript readable? Where it is not, what specifically obscures the argument? (Reviewers are not copyeditors — flag major clarity issues, but do not list typos.)

8. References. Are the cited works appropriate, current where they need to be, and accurate? Are there obvious omissions of relevant prior work?

For empirical research, consider which of the field-standard reporting checklists applies (STROBE, CONSORT, PRISMA, COREQ, ARRIVE, ENTREQ) and whether the manuscript meets it.

Recommendation categories

At the end of your review, recommend one of:

  • Accept — ready for publication as is, or with trivial copyediting only.
  • Accept with minor revisions — fundamentally sound, with small clarifications or additions needed.
  • Major revisions — the contribution is potentially publishable, but substantial work is required: additional analysis, restructuring, addressing missing literature, or rewriting sections.
  • Reject — the manuscript should not be published in Journal of Natural Science Research and Review. Either the contribution is too thin, the methods are flawed beyond repair, the topic is outside scope, or the work duplicates published research.

The recommendation is advisory. The Editor-in-Chief, on the Section Editor's advice, makes the final decision after weighing all reviews. We will tell you what decision was made and share other reviewers' comments after the decision is communicated to the author.

How to write the review

The Section Editor reads your review carefully; the author reads it more carefully than you might think. Write so that both can use what you say.

Two parts.

  • Comments to the author. Constructive, specific, and oriented toward improvement. State the strength of each criticism. Reference specific lines, sections, or figures. Avoid sweeping judgements ("the methods are weak") in favour of pinpointed ones ("the model in section 3 omits a control for X, which the authors discuss in the introduction as relevant — please address").
  • Confidential comments to the editor. Reserve for issues you would not put to the author directly: suspected misconduct, conflicts you noticed late, questions about scope fit, or strong disagreement with another reviewer's framing.

Length. Most useful reviews run 600 to 1,500 words. Reviews shorter than 300 words rarely contain enough to act on; reviews longer than 3,000 words usually pad the substantive feedback with restatement of the manuscript.

Tone. Direct but not adversarial. Authors are colleagues whose work has been entrusted to your judgement. Treat them as such.

What not to do.

  • Do not insist the manuscript cite your own work unless the omission is genuinely material to the argument. We track this; reviewers who routinely demand self-citation are removed from the reviewer pool.
  • Do not rewrite the paper. If you find yourself rewriting sentences, you have stopped reviewing and started editing. Identify the problem, suggest a direction, and let the author rewrite.
  • Do not require additional experiments, data collection, or analyses that go beyond what is needed to support the manuscript's stated claims. Scope expansion is a separate paper.
  • Do not reveal your identity in the comments to the author. The review is double-blind.

What you must not do

  • Do not paste the manuscript into a generative AI service. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and other commercial AI services log inputs. Pasting a manuscript is a confidentiality breach and may constitute leaking unpublished research.
  • Do not use AI to draft the substance of your review. AI-generated reviews are generic, miss the specific scholarly contribution, hallucinate references, and converge on similar phrasing across reviewers — patterns we now actively look for. The value of a peer review is in your specific expertise, which AI cannot supply.
  • Do not share the manuscript with anyone. Not with co-authors of your own work, not with colleagues "for a second opinion," not with students. If you genuinely need a second perspective from a junior collaborator, ask the Section Editor first; we will sometimes co-review with permission, with both names credited.
  • Do not contact the author. All communication routes through the Section Editor and the OJS system. If you happen to know the author's identity (small fields, distinctive datasets), say so to the editor and let them decide whether to reassign.
  • Do not use information from the manuscript in your own work until and unless the manuscript is published. Even after publication, normal citation practices apply.
  • Do not delay. If you cannot review by the deadline, say so when you accept (or as soon as you realise after).

Confidentiality and what counts as a leak

The manuscript, the reviews, the editorial correspondence, and the author identities are confidential. They remain confidential after the manuscript is rejected, after it is accepted and published, after you stop being a reviewer for Journal of Natural Science Research and Review, and indefinitely.

You may, after publication, refer to your contribution as a reviewer in general terms — "I reviewed an article in Journal of Natural Science Research and Review on this topic" — but not in identifying terms.

If you are asked by another journal to review a closely related manuscript and you believe the two are closely linked, tell that journal's editor without revealing details from our manuscript, and tell us. We will work out the right approach with the other editor.

Conflicts of interest

Decline the invitation, or withdraw mid-review, if any of the following applies:

  • You are an author on the manuscript (clearly).
  • You are a close collaborator of the author within the past five years (co-authored, shared a grant, supervised the author's PhD).
  • You have a personal relationship with the author that would impair objectivity (close family, romantic partner, current dispute).
  • You have a competing financial interest that would benefit from the manuscript being accepted or rejected.
  • You hold a publicly stated, strongly polarised position on the topic that would make a fair review difficult.

Less clear-cut conflicts (the author is at your institution but in a different department; you have met the author at conferences; you are publishing in the same field but on different questions) are typically not disqualifying. Mention them to the Section Editor when you accept and let them judge.

Time to review

Standard turnaround: 21 days from invitation acceptance for full-length articles; 14 days for short communications, commentaries, and revised manuscripts being checked.

If you need more time, ask before the deadline. We grant reasonable extensions. We send one reminder at the deadline; after a further 7 days without response we begin recruiting a replacement, which slows the manuscript and disadvantages the author.

What you get in return

Reviewing is unpaid, as it is for almost every scholarly journal. We are aware reviewing is a service to the field that costs you time. In return, we offer:

  • Public credit, optional. If you wish, we list you in the journal's annual reviewer-acknowledgements page (names only; never linked to specific manuscripts). Tell us at the end of the year whether you want to be included.
  • Verified review records on Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service (formerly Publons) — connect your account at any time and we forward verifications.
  • Annual letter for promotion or tenure — on request, the Editor-in-Chief writes a letter confirming the number and substance of your reviews for the journal in the past year. Email editor@jnsrr.ep-journals.org with the request and the date by which you need the letter.
  • Pre-submission preference. Reviewers in our active pool receive an annotated submission window during the journal's calls for special issues, and pre-submission inquiry response in 48 hours rather than 5 days.
  • Editorial advancement. Many of our Section Editors began as reviewers. We approach reviewers about editorial roles based on the quality of their reviews over a 12-to-18-month track.

Becoming a reviewer

We recruit reviewers in three ways: by invitation from the Section Editor's existing network, by self-registration through OJS (https://jnsrr.ep-journals.org/user/register), and by referral from existing reviewers and editorial board members.

If you would like to review for Journal of Natural Science Research and Review but have not been invited, register an account on the journal site, populate your reviewing-interests fields with 3 to 6 specific subject keywords (broad terms like "economics" are too broad to match invitations against), and link your ORCID iD. We invite from the registered pool when an in-area submission arrives.

Removing yourself from the reviewer pool

If you no longer wish to review for Journal of Natural Science Research and Review, either:

  • ignore invitations (we de-prioritise reviewers after three consecutive non-responses), or
  • tell us explicitly at editor@jnsrr.ep-journals.org and we mark your record as inactive.

You can re-activate at any time.

Help

For questions about a specific review, contact the Section Editor handling the manuscript directly through the OJS system.

For general questions about reviewing, contact editor@jnsrr.ep-journals.org.

To report a concern about another reviewer (suspected misconduct, breach of confidentiality, AI use), contact the Editor-in-Chief at the same address.

Effective: 1 May 2026 (v1.0).
Editorial contact: editor@jnsrr.ep-journals.org.