Peer review is an essential part in the publication process, ensuring that FSP maintains high quality standards for its published papers. Reviewing is often an unseen and unrewarded task. We are striving to recognize the efforts of reviewers.
When reviewing for FSP journals you:
Manuscripts submitted to FSP 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:
As part of the assessment, reviewers will be asked:
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 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.
Reviewers should keep the content of the manuscript, including the abstract, confidential. Reviewers must inform the Editorial Office if they would like a student or colleague to complete the review on their behalf.
FSP journals operate single or double blind peer review. 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.
Some journals offer authors the possibility to publish review reports with their paper and for reviewers to sign their open review reports, however this will only be done at publication with your express permission. If this is the case, it will be noted in the message inviting you to review. In all other cases, review reports are considered confidential and will only be disclosed with the explicit permission of the reviewer.
Note that, as the reviewer, you will have access to other reviewers' reports via the online submission system after you have submitted your report.
FSP aims to provide an efficient and high quality publishing service to authors and to the scientific community. We ask reviewers to assist by providing review reports in a timely manner. Please contact the editorial office if you require an extension to the review deadline.
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.
Note that your recommendation is visible only to journal editors, not to the authors.
Please rate the following aspects of the manuscript:
Manuscripts submitted to FSP journals should meet the highest standards of publication ethics:
If reviewers become aware of such scientific misconduct or fraud, plagiarism or any other unethical behavior related to the manuscript, they should raise these concerns with the in-house editor immediately.
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 reports should contain:
Note that FSP journals follow several standards and guidelines, including those from the ICMJE (medical journals), CONSORT (trial reporting), TOP (data transparency and openness), PRISMA (systematic reviews and meta-analyses) and ARRIVE (reporting of in vivo experiments). See the Publishing Standards and Guidelines page or contact the editorial office for more details. Reviewers familiar with the guidelines should report any concerns they have about their implementation.
Your comments should not include an indication of whether you think the article should be accepted for publication. For further guidance about writing a critical review, please refer to the following documents:
Reviewers may suggest that a manuscript may be more appropriate for publication in another FSP journal. To save time and effort, authors would have the possibility to request the transfer of review reports to another FSP journal. The full list of journals published by FSP can be found in official website ,hk.front-sci.com.