International Journal of Coronaviruses
For Reviewers
A useful review is confidential, independent, evidence-based and specific enough to help an editor judge validity and an author understand what must change.
Vetted invitation
Review is by invitation based on verified identity, relevant expertise and availability. There is no open self-registration guarantee, and reviewing confers no advantage for a reviewer’s own submissions.
Before opening the files
Accept only when the review can be independent
- The manuscript’s coronavirus subject and principal methods fall within the reviewer’s current expertise.
- The requested review can be completed within the deadline shown in the invitation; otherwise propose a realistic alternative or decline.
- There is no personal, professional, institutional, supervisory, collaborative, competitive or financial conflict that could impair judgment.
- The reviewer has not previously assessed the same manuscript for another journal without informing the editor.
- The manuscript and invitation can be kept confidential and will not be shared with students, colleagues or external tools without permission.
- Any uncertainty about expertise, identity or conflict is disclosed to the handling editor before acceptance.
Scientific assessment
Questions the review should answer
Question and contribution
Is the coronavirus question explicit, important to the stated audience and addressed by a sufficiently original or useful contribution?
Design and statistics
Can the design, sample, controls, outcomes and analysis support the conclusions? Are uncertainty, confounding and missing data handled appropriately?
Results and interpretation
Are results presented completely and accurately? Do claims remain within the evidence without becoming unsupported clinical or public-health advice?
Ethics and participant protection
Are ethics review, consent, trial registration, privacy, animal welfare and vulnerable-population safeguards reported where required?
Data and research record
Are data, code, images, sequences, protocols and repository records sufficient to assess and reproduce the work, subject to legitimate restrictions?
Coronavirus-specific risk
Are biosafety, containment, enhanced-pathogen or dual-use concerns identified and managed? Flag material risk confidentially to the editor.
Actionable feedback
Structure of the review report
Brief summary
State the question, design and principal contribution in neutral terms so the editor can confirm the manuscript has been understood.
Overall assessment
Identify the main strength, the central limitation and whether the conclusions are supported.
Major comments
Number each issue affecting validity, interpretation, ethics, reporting or reproducibility. Explain why it matters and what evidence or revision is needed.
Minor comments
List focused corrections for clarity, terminology, presentation, references, figures or tables. Do not use review to impose personal style preferences.
Confidential comments
Use the editor-only field for conflicts, suspected misconduct, legal risk, biosafety or dual-use concerns. Do not place allegations in comments sent to authors.
Recommendation
Select the category that follows from the review and briefly connect it to the major issues. The editor makes the decision.
Ethical review practice
Confidentiality, misconduct and AI tools
Confidentiality
Do not share, cite, retain for unrelated use or exploit unpublished content, ideas, data, code or methods learned through review.
Secure disposal
After the review and any authorized re-review are complete, securely delete downloaded manuscript files, figures, data and local notes unless the editor instructs otherwise for an active process.
AI restriction
Do not upload the manuscript, figures, data or review instructions to an external generative-AI or automated-analysis service. A reviewer may not delegate scientific judgment or report writing to an AI tool.
Suspected misconduct
Describe the specific observation privately to the editor. Do not contact the authors, conduct an independent investigation or make unsupported accusations in the author-facing report.
Citation requests
Recommend citations only when they are directly relevant to interpretation or completeness. Do not coerce citation of the reviewer’s work or inflate a journal’s citation metrics.
Respectful language
Evaluate the work, not the authors. Avoid discriminatory, dismissive or hostile language and do not infer quality from nationality, institution, career stage or language fluency.
Recommendation categories
Match the recommendation to the evidence
Accept
Reserved for a manuscript that meets the scientific, ethical and reporting requirements without substantive revision.
Minor revision
Appropriate when specific limited changes can resolve the remaining concerns without altering the central design or conclusions.
Major revision
Appropriate when substantial but potentially remediable scientific, analytical, reporting or interpretive changes are required.
Reject
Appropriate for fundamental flaws, unsupported conclusions, unresolved ethics or integrity concerns, or work outside the journal’s scope.
Under the journal’s single-blind model, reviewer identities remain confidential. If double-blind review was requested, authors should also be concealed in the review files. Report accidental identification to the editor.
Reviewer support
Ask before proceeding when a concern is material
Contact the editorial office about a conflict, deadline, missing file, ethics issue, biosafety risk or suspected integrity problem. Include the manuscript identifier but do not send confidential content through an unauthorized channel.
Contact the editorial office