Guidelines for Reviewers

Peer review is vital for enhancing the quality, credibility and acceptability of published
research and practice papers. Please carefully observe the following guidelines while reviewing a
manuscript.

1. Expertise: A reviewer is expected to provide good judgment, an honest and fair assessment of
the strengths and weaknesses of the work/manuscript on its various sections. The subject-matter
of a paper sent to a reviewer may/may not be identical to his/her field of expertise. One does not
has to be precisely qualified in a particular field to be a constructive reviewer. A reviewer’s job
is to review the overall quality of a manuscript sent to him/her.

2. Confidentiality: Reviewer receive unpublished work, which must be treated as confidential
until published. Reviewers must not disclose to others which papers they have reviewed; also,
they must not share those papers with any other person.

3. Intellectual Quality of Manuscript: Objective and constructive feedback from reviewer(s)
will help the authors to improve their manuscript. A paper must be judged on its intellectual
merits alone. Personal criticism or criticism based solely on the political or social views of the
reviewer is not acceptable. Remember it is the authors’ paper and not attempt to rewrite it to their
own preferred style if it is basically sound and clear. However, suggestions for changes that can
improve the clarity of manuscript are important. The suggestions must be based on valid
academic or technical grounds.

4. Conflict of interest: Reviewers must declare any conflict of interest or any other factor,
which may affect their review work e.g., for instance a reviewer may have received a paper of a
colleague or an intellectual opponent. In cases of conflict of interest, the reviewer(s) are
requested to notify the editorial team of their inability to review a manuscript.

5. Full explanation: Reviewers are obliged to be specific, objective, relevant and constructive in
their feedback on the manuscript and the quality of work. Critical or negative judgments must be
fully supported by detailed reference to evidence from the paper under review or other relevant
sources.

6. Plagiarism and copyright: If a reviewer considers that a paper may contain plagiarism or it
might breach another party’s copyright, they should notify the editorial group for the journal

7. Member of Editorial Board as Reviewer: If a member from editorial board is reviewing a

manuscript, then a transparent and blind review would be ensured. In this case, providing a
manuscript for double blind review would be handled by another member of the editorial board.

8. Responsiveness: Reviewers are asked to return their reports within three months. This assists
us to provide rapid feedback to the author.

9. Expectations Post Review: After reviewing a manuscript, the reviewer must keep the details
of manuscript and its review confidential. The reviewer would respond promptly to the matter if
contacted from Journal for any details about the reviewed manuscript.

The KEY for final recommendations as per AIOU policy is as follows:

 Scope, Newness, and Applicability: 30%
 Citation/ Quality of references: 20%
 Grammar and Style: 10%
 Contents/ all components and organization: 40%

The reviewer will submit the confidential comments to the editorial board, if any and will arrive
at one of the following recommendations.
 Accept, without revision
 Accept, after minor revisions suggested.
 Accept, after major revisions suggested.
 Reject, not fit for publication.
Moreover, the reviewer will intimate that after the revision, he/ she either wants to read the
article again or leave it up to the editor to decide.