Review Procedure

Manuscripts are subjected to iThenticate® plagiarism detection software and reviewed by editors and other experts in the field and may be proofread, content- and form- edited and returned for revision. Manuscripts are subjected to a double anonymized external peer-review process, guided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) ethical guidelines for peer reviewers, available from: https://publicationethics.org/node/19886. Reviewers must maintain confidentiality about the manuscripts and should not use data from such manuscripts or share such data with colleagues before they are published. Reviewers must not reproduce the manuscript for any purpose or use the peer review process as a means to further their own research aims, by requiring authors to respond to questions that are of interest to the reviewer but are not questions the study was designed to answer. Reviewers should refrain from suggesting their own published work be referenced.

Authors are expected to respond to a completed round of review by responding to reviewer comments and queries, accepting the corrections they agree with, explaining those they do not agree with, and revising the manuscript accordingly. The review process may involve arbitration by an additional (third) reviewer, or special (e.g., statistical) reviewer, and/or an editor. Satisfactory completion of the review process leads to acceptance with minor revisions or with no further revisions; unsatisfactory revisions and responses to the review process lead to rejection of the manuscript.