WRITING THE REVIEW
Instructions for reviewers of the Ukrainian Journal of Ophthalmology have been compiled in accordance with
- Guidances provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
- Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
- Policies by the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).
We also encourage reviewers to study Peer-Review Guidelines, Editorial Policies and Publication Ethics Policies.
Reviewers must assess the article within two weeks and send the review report or motivated refuse to the editorial office (via the journal system).
Reviews are expected to be professional, honest, courteous, prompt, and constructive. The desired major elements of a high-quality review should be as follows:
- The reviewer should have identified and commented on the major strengths and weaknesses of study design and methodology
- The reviewer should comment accurately and constructively upon the quality of the author's interpretation of the data, including acknowledgment of its limitations.
- The reviewer should comment on major strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript as a written communication, independent of the design, methodology, results, and interpretation of the study.
- The reviewer should comment on any ethical concerns raised by the study, or any possible evidence of low standards of scientific conduct.
- The reviewer should provide the author with useful suggestions for improvement of the manuscript.
- The reviewer's comments to the author should be constructive and professional
- The review should provide the editor the proper context and perspective to make a decision on acceptance (and/or revision) of the manuscript.
The reviewers provide written reports which include:
- Assessment of the subject and possibility of its publishing in the journal
- Assessment of content: evidence, novelty, significance and importance of conclusions.
- Notes on text presentation and article design.
- Recommendations on improving the text. In the report, reviewers should list examples which require the correction, indicating the number of the row in the text.
General issues that the reviewer needs to pay attention to:
- Is the submission original?
- Does the paper fit the scope of the journal?
- Would the paper be of interest to the readership of the journal?
- Does the paper help to expand or further research in this subject area?
- Does it significantly build on (the author’s) previous work?
- Do you feel that the significance and potential impact of a paper is high or low?
- Does the manuscript have flaws which should prohibit its publication? If so, please provide details.
- Is the paper complete? Is there an abstract or summary of the work undertaken as well as a concluding section?
- Is the title of the article appropriate and clear?
- Is the abstract clear, accessible, and in the correct form?
- Is the purpose of the article made clear in the introduction?
- Is the methodology presented in the manuscript and any analysis provided both accurate and properly conducted? Is the reporting of data and methodology sufficiently detailed and transparent to enable the reproduction of the results?
- Are the statistical methods appropriate?
- Do you find that the conclusions and data interpretation are robust, valid and reliable?
- Is all of the discussion relevant?
- Are all relevant accompanying data, citations, or statistics given by the author?
- Does this manuscript reference previous literature appropriately? If not, what references should be included or excluded?
- Should it be added experiments or data that could help strengthen the work in a revision?
Review forms have been developed and implemented in the journal system so that reviewers follow them when writing a review.
Download the review form for the ORIGINAL ARTICLE, LITERATURE REVIEW, SYSTEMATIC REVIEW, and CASE REPORT.
At the end of the review, a recommendation for publication is made:
- Recommend the article for publication;
- Recommend the article for publication after revision taking into account the comments (minor changes);
- Recommend the article for publication after revision taking into account the comments (major changes);
- Do not recommend the article for publication.
See also:
WAME Recommendations on Publication Ethics Policies for Medical Journals
