Responding to an invitation
Please respond to the review invitation within 7 days. Decline the invitation if the topic is outside your expertise, if you think you know the authors' identity, if you work at the same institution as an author, or if you have co-authored with, supervised or had a close personal relationship with an author in the last three years. Suggesting a suitable alternative reviewer is very helpful to the editor.
Timeline
The deadline for the first review is 4 weeks; a reminder is sent before the deadline. The deadline for reviewing a revised manuscript is 2 weeks. If you cannot meet a deadline, please tell the editor in advance.
Confidentiality
The manuscript you review is confidential. Do not share or cite it, and do not use it in your own work before publication. Do not upload the manuscript or any part of it to artificial intelligence tools, and do not generate your report with artificial intelligence.
Evaluation criteria
- Clarity of the research question and its contribution; currency and adequacy of the literature review
- Fit of the design with the research question; justification of the sample size (e.g., power analysis)
- Evidence of the validity and reliability of the measures; citation of the adaptation study for adapted scales
- Appropriateness of the statistical analyses; reporting of effect sizes, confidence intervals and exact p values
- In qualitative studies, transparency of data collection and analysis and the trustworthiness strategies used
- Whether the conclusions follow from the data; open discussion of limitations
- Statement of ethics approval, informed consent and institutional or scale permissions
- Compliance with the APA Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) (formatting is done with the template at the revision stage)
- Whether the title and abstract accurately reflect the content (in a revised manuscript, also the extended English abstract)
Writing the report
- Begin by summarizing the manuscript in two or three sentences; this shows how you have read it.
- List major and minor issues under separate headings.
- Pair each criticism with a concrete suggestion the authors can act on.
- A general note on language is enough; there is no need to list every typo.
- Avoid personal or dismissive remarks; criticism should address the work.
- Do not make citation of your own work or of the journal a condition; any references you suggest should be genuinely necessary.
Ethical concerns
If you notice plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data, duplicate publication, missing ethics approval or any other ethical problem, report it to the editor in your confidential comments. Do not investigate the matter yourself or contact the authors.
Review form and recommendation
Reviews are submitted through the online Reviewer Evaluation Form in the journal system. The form covers the evaluation criteria, comments for the authors and confidential comments for the editor. Give your recommendation as one of the following: accept, minor revision, major revision, reject.
Acknowledgement
Reviewers receive a certificate of reviewing on request. At the end of each year, the names and institutions of the reviewers who served that year are published on the journal website.