Science International is seeking active and high-profile scientists to join us as valuable reviewers. If you are interested in joining our community of peer-reviewers for one or more of our journals, please fill out the Reviewer Registration Form. The managing editors of the selected journals will send you a notification once approved.

Benefits to becoming a Volunteer Reviewers

• Free Membership of Asian Council of Science Editors
• Receive a personalized reviewer certificate.
• Entitled to publish future submissions to any Science International journals FREE.

The following ideas about reviewing may seem obvious. Most scientists know instinctively how to judge a scientific paper. Yet many prospective referees have questions about the review process and want to know what a journal's editor would like to see in an "ideal" referee report.

Before accepting an invitation to review, please consider the following:

• Does the manuscript match your areas of expertise?
• Do you have any conflict of interest? If yes, disclose it to the editor with your response?
• Do you have enough time to meet the reviewing deadline?

Availability
Please respond promptly to the Editor's message asking whether you are willing to review an article. We strive to provide an efficient and high-quality, timely publishing service to the author. If you have other commitments and cannot review the manuscript at the requested time (usually about a month), please immediately let the editor choose another reviewer.

Questions to keep in mind as you read the article:

• Does the paper present original research?
• Is the abstract informative and presented in structures format?
• Does the article represent a significant contribution to the current literature in the field?
• Are the results adequately documented (e.g., are relevant data included)?
• Could any of the figures or tables be more effectively presented as online-only material in the electronic version of the journal?
• Are errors and uncertainties given and explained?
• Is there sufficient reference to previous work?
• Are the materials and methods presented clearly?

Timeliness
Science International is committed to rapid yet qualitative editorial decisions and publications. Accordingly, all the submitted articles undergo a rigorous peer-review process to assess the originality and technical correctness of the article. The rapid but rigorous peer-review process is valuable both to our authors and the scientific community. We, therefore, ask the referees to respond promptly or inform us if they anticipate a significant delay. This will allows us to keep the authors informed and, where necessary, find alternative referees.

Conflicts of interest
Let the Editor know immediately if you have a conflict of interest that may prejudice the review, either positively or negatively. For example, if one of the authors is:

• From your institution?
• One of your students?
• A close collaborator?
• Your nemesis?
• Your spouse?

Please note that if you have previously reviewed the same manuscript for another journal, it should not be considered a conflict of interest, but feel free to let us know if the manuscript has been improved or not, compared to the previous version.

Anonymity
Referees should treat the review process as being strictly confidential. Science International doesn’t reveal the identity of reviewers to the authors, and the same provision of privacy and anonymity extends to the reviewer, who should keep the following guidelines in mind:

• Manuscripts reviewed for the Science International journals should not be discussed with anyone not directly involved in the review process.
• Upon your acceptance of the manuscript and its materials, you must treat it as a confidential document and can’t be shared by anyone without prior authorization from the editor.
• If colleagues are consulted, they should be identified to the editors
• If experts from outside the referee's laboratory are consulted, referees should check with the editors beforehand to avoid involving anyone who the editor may have excluded
• Referees should, as a rule, not disclose their identities to the authors or other colleagues since they may be asked to comment on the criticisms of other referees and may then find it difficult to be objective. Should they feel strongly about making their identities known to the authors, they should do so via the editor. We strongly disapprove of any attempt by authors to determine the identities of referees or to confront them and encourage referees to neither confirm nor deny any speculation in this regard.

Grammar and English usage
If the manuscript required a lot of copy editing (have spelling, punctuation, grammatical errors), please mention that in your review report so that the editor may handle it accordingly at the time of production and publication.

Tone
If the manuscript makes you angry, keep in mind that insulting or offending the authors may only make them feel you are biased against them. As a result, they may pay less attention to your otherwise useful review. A calm and persuasive report that makes the same recommendations will be much more effective in guiding errant authors. Note that the Editor will remove unprofessional comments from referee reports.

Writing the report
The primary purpose of referee reports is to provide the editors with the information that they need to reach a decision, but they should also instruct the authors on how to strengthen their manuscript if revision is a possibility. Referees are asked to submit both confidential comments to the editor and those directly transmitted to the authors. We recommend the following division of the report:

Comments for transmission to the authors
Referees are asked to maintain a positive and impartial but critical attitude in evaluating manuscripts. Criticisms should remain dispassionate; offensive language is not acceptable. Your comments should be courteous and constructive and should not include any ad hominem remarks or personal details. A negative report should explain to the authors the weaknesses of their manuscript to understand the basis for a decision to ask for revision or reject the manuscript.

The ideal report should include:

• An initial paragraph summarizes the major findings and the referee's overall impressions and highlights the major shortcomings of the manuscript.
• If appropriate, specific numbered comments may be broken down into major and minor criticisms (numbering facilitates both the editor's evaluation of the manuscript and the author's rebuttal to the report).

The report should answer the following questions:

• What are the major claims, and how significant are they?
• Are the claims novel and convincing?
• Are the claims appropriately discussed in the context of earlier literature?
• Who will be interested and why?
• Does the paper stand out in some way from the others in its field?
• Are there other experiments or analyses that would strengthen the paper?

For manuscripts that may merit further consideration, it is also helpful if referees can provide advice on the following points where appropriate:

• How the clarity of the writing might be improved (without necessarily going into specific details of spelling and grammar)
• How the manuscript might be shortened
• How to do the study justice without overselling the claims
• How to represent earlier literature more fairly
• How to improve the presentation of methodological detail so that the experiments can be reproduced.

This author's report should not include a recommendation regarding publication, which is regarded as confidential information since the final decision regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection rests with the editor.

Overall recommendation
The manuscript should be rated, either on the form provided or in an email, according to the following:

• Accept in present form The paper is accepted without any further changes.
• Accept after minor revisions: The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.
• Reconsider after major revisions: The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point by point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. Usually, only one round of major revisions is allowed. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within ten days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.
• Reject: The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and the paper is rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal.

Additional confidential comments to the editor might include:

• A definite recommendation regarding publication
• An assessment of how much any suggested additional experiments would improve the manuscript and of how difficult they would be to complete within a reasonable time frame (1-2 months)
• In cases where the manuscript is unacceptable in its present form, the reviewer should give an opinion about whether the study is sufficiently promising to encourage resubmission in the future.
• Opinion as to whether it should be considered to convert the manuscript to a short communication.