For reviewers
Reviewer Guidelines
What Journal of Zoological Research asks of a peer reviewer, and what a useful review of a zoological manuscript contains.
- Single-blind by default
- Manuscripts are confidential
- ISSN 2694-2275
The invitation
Accepting or declining
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Some manuscripts therefore arrive with the author names withheld.
Accept an invitation where your own published work covers the manuscript's subject and its methods closely enough for you to weigh the evidence, and where you can return a considered report within the period the invitation states.
Decline where a competing interest exists, and tell the editor why: recent collaboration or co-authorship with any author, a shared institution, supervision of an author, a financial or personal interest in the outcome, or competing unpublished work on the same question. Where your expertise covers only part of the manuscript, say which part; a review confined to what you can judge is more useful than one that reaches beyond it. Suggesting a better-placed colleague helps the editor more than a late decline.
A reviewer must not pass a manuscript to a colleague or a student without the editor's agreement. Where a review is prepared jointly, name the co-reviewer so the contribution is recorded.
Confidentiality
Handling the manuscript and its files
A manuscript under review is confidential. Its content, its findings and the fact of its submission stay between the reviewer, the editor and the editorial office until the work is published.
After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.
For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors.
The assessment
What a review is asked to cover
The question is whether the evidence supports the claims, and whether another zoologist could repeat the work.
- Question and design
- Is the question stated clearly, and does the design answer it? Are the sampling or experimental design, the controls, the sample size and the unit of replication suited to the question?
- Methods
- Are the study system, the animals, the procedures and the analytical methods described in enough detail to be repeated? Is any modification of an established method explained?
- Statistics and reporting
- Are the tests appropriate, their assumptions checked, and the results reported with effect sizes and measures of uncertainty rather than significance alone? Does the reporting follow the checklist the design calls for?
- Results and interpretation
- Do the results follow from the data, and do the conclusions stay within what the design supports? Are alternative explanations considered?
- Figures, tables and images
- Do the figures show what the text claims? Raise any figure where adjustment appears to have obscured, removed or introduced a feature, or where panels appear grouped without dividing lines. Note any specimen image lacking a scale bar.
- Data and materials
- Is there a data-availability statement, and does it let a reader reach the data? Are voucher specimens given a repository and catalog number, and sequences an accession number?
- Ethics and welfare
- Where live animals were studied, are the ethical approval, permit numbers and welfare provisions reported? Raise any welfare or permit concern with the editor, whatever the scientific merit of the work.
- Literature
- Is the work placed in its literature, and are the citations relevant? Suggest a reference only where it is genuinely needed for the argument.
Writing the report
Making a review useful
A useful report separates what would change the conclusions from what would improve the presentation, and gives the reasoning for each.
Open with a short summary of what the manuscript reports, so the editor and the authors can see how you read it. Then set out the substantive points in order of weight, each identified by section, page or line, with the reason it matters. Keep minor and editorial points in a separate list.
Address the work rather than the authors, and write so that the report can be sent to them as it stands. Where a point rests on your own judgment rather than on the evidence, say so. Where you recommend a specific analysis, say what it would settle.
Confidential comments to the editor are for matters that cannot go to the authors — a suspicion of misconduct, or a competing interest that emerged while reading. The recommendation itself belongs there; the reasoning belongs in the report.
Concerns and revisions
Raising a concern, and reviewing a revision
Integrity concerns. Where reading raises a suspicion of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication or image manipulation, tell the editor rather than pursuing it yourself, and give what you have observed. The editorial office carries it forward, and the manuscript stays confidential while the question is open.
Revised manuscripts. Read the authors' point-by-point response alongside the revision, and confine the second review to the points raised in the first and to anything the changes have introduced. Where the authors give reasoned disagreement, say whether the reasoning answers the point.
Recognition. The journal is grateful for the time reviewing takes. Reviewing confers no advantage in the review of a reviewer's own submissions, and editorial decisions remain independent of fees, membership, roles and paid services.
Reference
The pages a reviewer works from
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The remit the manuscript is assessed against.
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What the authors were asked to supply.
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Ethics, data, images, corrections and confidentiality.
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How the editor will use the review.
Researchers willing to review for the journal are welcome to write to [email protected] with their field and their ORCID iD.