Author Guidelines Peer Review Reviewers Focus and Scope Publication Ethics Open Access Author(s) Fee About misconduct
Reviewers
Researchers, clinicians and other professionals with the related interest may be invited to participate the peer review process. Before being involved in the peer review process, the journal editor will verify the identity of the reviewers by using ORCID search, PubMed search, Scopus search, etc., or sending mails to ask for detailed CV of the reviewers if the reviewers will. Generally, a reviewer will be evaluated after he/she completed several reviews for his/her qualification.
Authors may also suggest potential reviewers if they wish; however, it will be decided by editors whether or not to use these reviewers. Authors should not suggest those reviewers who are recent collaborators or colleagues, or have some potential conflicts of interest to participate. The journal requests authors who wish to suggest peer reviewers to state clearly in the cover letter about the detailed information of the reviewers including institutions, and institutional email addresses by which the journal editor will verify the identity of the reviewer.
Sometimes authors should exclude those people or groups from peer reviewers of their articles, i.e., who has potential conflicts, and the reasons of exclusion should be stressed in their cover letter on submission. But authors should not exclude too many as they wish, because this may also impact the normal peer review process. There is still the point to emphasize, editors will decide to choose the proper reviewers, even those authors excluded.
Last but not least, authors MUST suggest reviewers with correct information. As soon as intentionally falsifying information is found, rejections of the manuscript will be caused and further investigations may initiate for the authors publication history as per the publication ethics.