Reviewer Guidelines
Role and Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers
Peer reviewers play an essential role in maintaining the quality, integrity, and credibility of the scholarly record. By accepting an invitation to review a manuscript for the NRIAG Journal of Astronomy and Geophysics, reviewers agree to:
Provide a fair, objective, honest, and constructive assessment of the manuscript’s scientific merit, methodological soundness, and ethical compliance.
Complete the review within the timeframe specified in the review invitation, or promptly inform the handling editor if additional time is required.
Treat the manuscript and all associated materials as strictly confidential.
Declare any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest before accepting the review assignment.
Decline the review invitation if they do not have the appropriate expertise to evaluate the manuscript or cannot provide an impartial assessment.
Not retain, distribute, use, or exploit unpublished information obtained through peer review for personal, professional, or competitive advantage.
Promptly alert the handling editor to any serious concerns regarding research integrity or publication ethics identified during the review.
Reviewers are expected to accept or decline a review invitation within 7 days. If no response is received within this period, the invitation will be automatically withdrawn. Reviewers who accept an invitation are expected to submit their review within 4 weeks. Reviewers are expected to comply with the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers
Conflict of Interest — Reviewers
Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that could affect, or reasonably be perceived to affect, their impartiality in evaluating a manuscript. Reviewers should decline the review invitation when a conflict prevents them from providing an independent and objective assessment.
Potential conflicts of interest may include, but are not limited to:
Current or recent collaboration with any of the authors.
Current affiliation with the same institution as any of the authors.
A close personal, professional, supervisory, competitive, or adversarial relationship with any of the authors.
A financial or other material interest that could be affected by the publication of the work.
Prior substantial involvement in the research or manuscript under consideration.
If reviewers are uncertain whether a relationship or circumstance constitutes a conflict of interest, they should disclose it to the handling editor before accepting the assignment. The handling editor will determine whether the reviewer may proceed.
Reviewers are required to declare their conflict-of-interest status when responding to the review invitation and to promptly disclose any conflict that becomes apparent during the review process.
Confidentiality of the Peer Review Process
Manuscripts submitted for peer review are confidential documents. Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript and all associated materials throughout and after the peer-review process. Reviewers must not:
Share the manuscript or any associated materials with colleagues, assistants, or other individuals without prior permission from the handling editor.
Discuss or disclose the manuscript, its contents, or information obtained through the review process with unauthorized individuals.
Upload the manuscript, or any part of it, including text, figures, tables, data, or supplementary materials, to generative AI tools, large language models, or other external services or platforms where the confidentiality and security of the manuscript cannot be assured.
Use unpublished data, methods, ideas, arguments, results, or conclusions obtained through peer review for their own research or for personal, professional, or competitive advantage before publication.
If a reviewer wishes to involve a co-reviewer or another individual in the review, prior approval must be obtained from the handling editor. The reviewer must provide the individual's name and affiliation and disclose any relevant conflict of interest. Any approved co-reviewer is subject to the same confidentiality, conflict-of-interest, and ethical requirements as the invited reviewer.
AI Use in Peer Review
Reviewers must not use generative AI tools, including ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Gemini, or similar technologies, to perform the intellectual assessment of a manuscript or to generate the substantive content of a peer-review report. The evaluation of the manuscript’s scientific merit, methodology, originality, validity, and ethical compliance must be conducted by the human reviewer. Because manuscripts under peer review are confidential, reviewers must not upload or enter any manuscript content, including text, figures, tables, data, supplementary materials, or other unpublished information, into generative AI tools or external AI systems where confidentiality cannot be assured.
AI-assisted tools may be used solely to improve the grammar, language, or readability of comments independently written by the reviewer, provided that no confidential manuscript content, unpublished information, or identifiable author information is entered into such tools.
Reviewers remain fully responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and content of their review and for the recommendation submitted to the journal.
How to Write a Quality Review
Review Report Structure
A high-quality peer-review report should provide a clear, constructive, and evidence-based assessment of the manuscript. Reviewers should consider the following areas:
| Review Component | Key Questions to Address |
|---|---|
| Summary | What is the manuscript about? What are its main objectives, contributions, and key findings? |
| Scientific merit and originality | Is the research question scientifically important and sufficiently original? Does the work make a meaningful contribution to the field? |
| Methods and reproducibility | Are the methods appropriate, scientifically sound, and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be understood and, where applicable, reproduced? |
| Data and analysis | Are the data appropriate and presented clearly? Are the analyses, including statistical methods where applicable, appropriate and correctly performed? Are the results adequately supported by the data? |
| Results and conclusions | Are the results clearly presented and interpreted appropriately? Are the conclusions supported by the results, without unsupported claims or overinterpretation? |
| Ethical and research integrity | Where applicable, are ethics approval, informed consent, conflicts of interest, data availability, and relevant reporting requirements adequately addressed? Are there any concerns regarding plagiarism, duplicate publication, data or image integrity, or other potential research-integrity issues? |
| Presentation | Is the manuscript clearly organized and written? Are the title and abstract informative and consistent with the manuscript? Are figures and tables clear, necessary, and appropriately presented? |
| References | Are the references relevant, appropriate, and sufficiently comprehensive? Are important references missing? Reviewers should not request unnecessary citations, including citations to their own work. |
| Recommendation | Is the recommendation clearly supported by the comments and concerns raised in the review? |
Reviewer Conduct Standards
Reviews should be:
Constructive: Focus on evaluating and improving the manuscript rather than criticizing the authors.
Specific: Clearly identify the sections, line numbers, figures, tables, or other elements of the manuscript to which comments refer, where appropriate.
Evidence-based: Support substantive criticisms with clear scientific reasoning and, where appropriate, relevant literature or methodological standards.
Balanced: Provide a fair assessment of the manuscript, acknowledging its strengths as well as identifying weaknesses and areas requiring improvement.
Respectful and professional: Use objective and courteous language. Personal criticism, discriminatory remarks, hostile language, or comments directed at the authors rather than their work are not acceptable.
Relevant: Comments and requested revisions should be directly related to the scientific quality, clarity, integrity, and scope of the manuscript. Reviewers should avoid unnecessary requests that do not contribute meaningfully to improving the work.
Reviews containing offensive or inappropriate language, personal attacks, discriminatory comments, or unsupported assertions may be returned to the reviewer for revision before being shared with the authors.
Reviewer Recognition and Credit
The NRIAG Journal of Astronomy and Geophysics recognizes and values the essential contribution of peer reviewers to maintaining the quality, integrity, and scientific standards of the journal.
Reviewers who complete a peer review may receive formal recognition of their contribution through mechanisms supported by the journal and its publishing platform, while maintaining the confidentiality and anonymity of the peer-review process.
Where available, reviewers may:
Receive a certificate or formal acknowledgement of their completed review.
Receive recognition of their reviewing activity through an appropriate reviewer-recognition service, where supported and subject to the reviewer’s consent.
Be acknowledged for their contribution to the journal through appropriate recognition initiatives, without identifying the manuscripts they reviewed.
Any reviewer recognition will preserve the confidentiality of manuscripts, authors, reviewer reports, and editorial decisions and will not disclose the identity of a reviewer in connection with a specific manuscript. https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers.