For Reviewers

Last Updated: July 06, 2019

Introduction
JANS is committed to publishing good research manuscripts based on well-explained review reports. The purpose of a good review is to help the editors to reach a decision and provide a brief and valid explanation of manuscript's areas of improvement which can strengthen the chances of acceptance or provide valid reasoning for rejection to the author. A recommendation by a reviewer for the publication of a manuscript in JANS should be based on the following criteria

Confidentiality:
The journal considers every submitted manuscript as a confidential document and the reviewers are also expected to abide by this rule. A reviewer is not allowed to discuss the research idea of the unpublished manuscript with other colleagues without permission from the editor and author both. The manuscript's work cannot be implemented in reviewer’s own research or some personal advantage

Anonymity
According to the journal's policies, the reviewer's names are not disclosed to the authors. Reviewers are asked to adopt the same policy by not mentioning their name or any other personal information in the reviewer's comments of a manuscript.

Match the area of expertise
The research article given for review should match the area of expertise of a reviewer and the reviewer must accept the article only if he/she feels competent enough to do the assigned work. The journal may only have the information about a reviewer's work in a broader aspect and thus journal gives the freedom to reviewers to deny the review request from the editor on this basis.

Right to edit
JANS holds the right to edit in or out the comments in a review report if the Editor-in-Chief finds the use of an offensive language or the disclosure of confidentiality. Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject a paper at any stage without assigning the reason and his decision would be final.

Respect of agreed/specified time limit
The journal appreciates the prompt response of review request from the reviewer and the submission of the review report within the specified time period. If the reviewer feels that a particular manuscript might take a long time due to some other professional or personal prior commitments and preventing him/her to submit a timely review, he/she should inform the editor before the deadline. In such a circumstance, an editor may defer the manuscript to some other reviewer (based on his own prior experience or on your recommendation) or may extend the allotted time.

Potential conflict of interest
A conflict of interest eliminates the purpose of an objective evaluation of a manuscript. If a reviewer has some professional, personal or financial affiliations to the manuscript or the author or the sponsoring organization/agency, a full disclosure of this information to the editor at the time of response to review request is mandatory.

Knowledge of JANS policies for authors
A reviewer must have the knowledge of policies for authors of writing a manuscript (visit Journal's website for the Guidelines for Authors, ˜Publication ethics and best practice guidelines and Format for paper submission). These policies will help them to comment on whether the author is following the journal's rules for the preparation of the manuscript. It mainly includes the originality of data, novelty of conclusions, paper's written presentation and the ethical issues of data collection. For example, if a reviewer suspects that the submitted manuscript is a copy of another author's language and idea from a published work, it is considered as an offence of plagiarism on ethical grounds.

Submission of Review Report
The reviewer will use Microsoft Word track changes feature to suggest/include all the changes and recommendation in the manuscript along with the comments in a separate Reviewer's form which will be sent by journal's editor along with the manuscript.