Duties and Responsibilities of Referees:
1) Objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Reviewers should be aware of any personal bias and take this into account when reviewing an article. The reviewer should clearly express his/her judgements in support of his/her decision.
2) Contribution to Editorial Decision: Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and provides the author with the opportunity to improve the manuscript. In this respect, a referee who feels inadequate in reviewing an article or who thinks that he/she cannot complete the review in a short time should not accept the referee invitation.
3) Confidentiality: All manuscripts received by the journal for review must be kept confidential. Reviewers should not share reviews or information about the manuscript with anyone or communicate directly with the authors. Information contained in the manuscript should not be used by a reviewer in his/her own research without the express written permission of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review should be kept confidential and should not be used for personal gain.
4) Sensitivity to Violations of Research and Publication Ethics: Reviewers should be alert to possible ethical issues in the manuscript and report them to the editor.
5) Conflict of Interest: Reviewers should not agree to review a manuscript with potential conflicts of interest arising from their relationship with the authors or the organisations with which the manuscript is affiliated.
6) Referee Citation Request: If a referee suggests that an author include citations to the referee's (or their collaborators') work, this should be for genuine scientific reasons and not for the purpose of increasing the referee's citation count or increasing the visibility of their work. See also Code of Ethics for Referees
Making a Review
Referees' evaluations should be objective. During the refereeing process, referees are expected to make their evaluations by considering the following points.
• Does the article contain new and important information?
• Does the abstract clearly and accurately describe the content of the article?
• Is the methodology described in a coherent and understandable manner?
• Are the interpretations and conclusions substantiated by the findings?
• Are adequate references given to other studies in the field?
• Is the language quality adequate?
• Does the abstract / abstract / keywords / keywords accurately reflect the content of the article?