For Reviewers

“Rigorous peer-review is the corner-stone of high-quality academic publishing. Therefore, we are sincerely grateful to scholars who give their time to peer-review articles submitted to our journals.” Ziggurat Publishing Editorial Team".

Benefits of Ziggurat Publishing Volunteer Reviewers

Peer review is an essential part of the publication process, ensuring that Ziggurat Publishing maintains high-quality standards for its published articles. Reviewing is often an unseen and unrewarded task. We are striving to recognize the efforts of reviewers.

When reviewing for Ziggurat Publishing journals you:

Receive a discount voucher code entitling you to a reduction in the article processing charge (APC) of a future submission to any Ziggurat Publishing journal. Vouchers issued to specific individuals are not transferable and must be mentioned during the submission procedure. Please note reviewer vouchers must be applied before acceptance. Vouchers can no longer be applied once an APC invoice has been issued.

Receive a personalized reviewer certificate.

Are considered for the journal’s outstanding reviewer award.

Can build your profile on Publons and have your reviewing activity added for participating journals.

Invitation to Join Ziggurat Publishing Volunteer Reviewer Database

If you are interested in reviewing articles for one or more of our journals, please register your contact details, including your ORCID identifier, institutional affiliation, a short CV, and 5-6 keywords in line with your expertise.

The managing editors of the selected journals will send you a notification once approved.

Prospective reviewers may also be interested in the Publons Academy, which provides training in how to conduct peer review.

Invitation to Review

Manuscripts submitted to Ziggurat Publishing journals are reviewed by at least two experts. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and to provide a recommendation to the external editor on whether a manuscript can be accepted, requires revisions or should be rejected.

We ask invited reviewers to:

Accept or decline any invitations quickly, based on the manuscript title and abstract;

Suggest alternative reviewers if an invitation must be declined;

Request an extension in case more time is required to compose a report.

As part of the assessment, reviewers will be asked:

To rate the originality, significance, quality of the presentation, scientific soundness, interest to the readers, overall merit and English level of the manuscript;

To provide an overall recommendation for the publication of the manuscript;

To provide a detailed, constructive review report;

Potential Conflicts of Interests

We ask reviewers to inform the journal editor if they hold a conflict of interests that may prejudice the review report, either in a positive or negative way. The editorial office will check as far as possible before the invitation; however, we appreciate the cooperation of reviewers in this matter.

Reviewers who are invited to assess a manuscript they previously reviewed for another journal should not consider this as a conflict of interest in itself. In this case, reviewers should feel free to let us know if the manuscript has been improved or not compared to the previous version.

Confidentiality and Anonymity

Reviewers should keep the content of the manuscript, including the abstract, confidential. Reviewers must inform the Editorial Office if they would like a colleague to complete the review on their behalf.

Reviewers should be careful not to reveal their identity to the authors, either in their comments or in metadata for reports submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF format.

Peer-Review and Editorial Procedure

All manuscripts sent for publication in our journals are strictly and thoroughly peer-reviewed by experts (this includes research and review articles, spontaneous submissions, and invited papers). The Managing Editor of the journal will perform an initial check of the manuscript’s suitability upon receipt. The Editorial Office will then organize the peer-review process performed by independent experts and collect at least two review reports per manuscript. We ask our authors for adequate revisions (with a second round of peer-review if necessary) before a final decision is made. The final decision is made by the academic editor (usually the Editor-in-Chief of a journal or the Guest Editor of a Special Issue). Accepted articles are copy-edited and English-edited.

Rating the Manuscript

Please evaluate the following aspects of the manuscript:

Originality/Novelty:

Is the question original and well defined? Do the results provide an advance in current knowledge?

Significance:

Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses and speculations carefully identified as such?

Quality of Presentation:

Is the article written in an appropriate way? Are the data and analyses presented appropriately? Are the highest standards for the presentation of the results used?

Scientific Soundness:

Is the study correctly designed and technically sound? Are the analyses performed with the highest technical standards? Are the data robust enough to draw the conclusions? Are the methods, tools, software, and reagents described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results?

Interest to the Readers:

Are the conclusions interesting for the readership of the Journal? Will the paper attract a wide readership, or be of interest only to a limited number of people? (please see the Aims and Scope of the journal)

Overall Merit:

Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work provide an advance towards the current knowledge? Do the authors have addressed an important long-standing question with smart experiments?

English Level:

Is the English language appropriate and understandable?

Manuscripts submitted to Ziggurat Publishing journals should meet the highest standards of publication ethics:

Manuscripts should only report results that have not been submitted or published before, even in part.

Manuscripts must be original and should not reuse text from another source without appropriate citation.

For biological studies, the studies reported should have been carried out in accordance with generally accepted ethical research standards.

If reviewers become aware of such scientific misconduct or fraud, plagiarism or any other unethical behaviour related to the manuscript, they should raise these concerns with the in-house editor immediately.

Overall Recommendation

Please provide an overall recommendation for the publication of the manuscript as follows:

Accept in Present Form:

The paper is accepted without any further changes.

Accept after Minor Revisions:

The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.

Reconsider after Major Revisions:

The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point by point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. Usually, only one round of major revisions is allowed. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within ten days, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.

Reject:

The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and the paper is rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal.

Note that your recommendation is visible only to journal editors, not to the authors.

Review Report

Review reports should contain:

A brief summary of one short paragraph outlining the aim of the paper and its main contributions.

Broad comments highlighting areas of strength and weakness. These comments should be specific enough for authors to be able to respond.

Specific comments referring to line numbers, tables or figures. Reviewers need not comment on formatting issues that do not obscure the meaning of the paper, as these will be addressed by editors.

Ziggurat Publishing Journals Use