For Reviewers

As a double-blind peer reviewer for Vietnam Journal of Agricultural Sciences (VJAS), you are part of a valued community. Scientific progress depends on the communication of information that can be trusted, and the peer review process is a vital part of that system.

Each submitted paper is rigorously reviewed. For an in-depth review, at least two reviewers (at least one Vietnamese reviewer and one foreign reviewer are consulted). Reviewers are contacted before being sent a reviewer account to gain access to a paper on our web-based system and are asked to return comments online within 2 weeks for most papers by logging in with the provided account. As part of the assessment, reviewers will be asked to provide a detailed, constructive review report and if possible detailed comments on the manuscript file to provide the best guide for the author(s) to improve the quality of their paper.

We greatly appreciate the time spent in preparing a review and will consult you on a revision of a manuscript if needed. The final responsibility for decisions of acceptance or rejection of the manuscript lies with the Editorial Board.

Ethical Guidelines for Reviewers

  1. Reviews should be objective evaluations of the research. If you cannot judge a paper impartially, you should not accept it for review or you should notify the Editor as soon as you appreciate the situation.
  2. If, as a reviewer, you believe that you are not qualified to evaluate a component of the research, you should inform the Editor in your review.
  3. Reviews should be constructive and courteous and the reviewer should respect the intellectual independence of the author. The reviewer should avoid personal comments; Vietnam Journal of Agricultural Sciencesreserves the right to edit out comments that will hinder constructive discussion of manuscripts.
  4. Just as you wish prompt evaluations of your own research, please return your reviews within the time period specified when you were asked to review the paper. If events will prevent a timely review, it is your responsibility to inform the Editor at the time of the request.
  5. The review process is conducted anonymously; Vietnam Journal of Agricultural Sciencesnever reveals the identity of reviewers to authors. The privacy and anonymity provisions of this process extend to the reviewer, who should not reveal his or her identity to outsiders or members of the press. The review itself will be shared only with the author, and possibly with other reviewers and our Editorial Board.
  6. The submitted manuscript is a privileged communication and must be treated as a confidential document. Please destroy or delete all copies of the manuscript after review. Please do not share the manuscript with any colleagues without the explicit permission of the Editor. Reviewers should not make personal or professional use of the data or interpretations before publication without the authors' specific permission (unless you are writing an editorial or commentary to accompany the article).

Reviewers's checklist

In order to qualify the manuscript, in addition to your usual review, please check the following criteria:

  1. [ ] The paper is original and contributes to science with a significant novelty.
  2. [ ] The English of the paper is good. The paper is well-written and understandable.
  3. [ ] The title and the abstract are informative.
  4. [ ] The keywords and the classification are properly chosen to help categorization.
  5. [ ] The introduction summarizes the fundamentals, gives a critical evaluation of the previous research on the topic, and objectives.
  6. [ ] The description of the methods and/or the experimental work is adequate.
  7. [ ] The interpretation of the results and the discussion of the results are careful and comprehensive.
  8. [ ] The references cover the recent and the past activities in the field including papers reported in all journals of the field.
  9. [ ] The list of the references perfectly matches the citation in the content.
  10. [ ] The number and the quality of the figures and the tables are suitable. Numbers and physical quantities are written with the proper number of significant digits and units. Error calculation is good.
  11. [ ] The conclusions sound convincing.

User Guide for Reviewers

As a reviewer, you will learn of the review request via email or by checking your dashboard:

From the My Assigned list, find the title and Review link. Notice the lack of any author information in this double-blind peer review process.

Selecting the Review link will take you to the first review step in the submission record, which is much more limited than the editor’s view, and contains no author information.

This first step consists of the following sections:

Request for Review: provides some text inviting you to act as a reviewer.

Article Title: provides the title of the article.

Abstract: provides the abstract text.

Further down the screen, you will find additional information.

The View All Submission Details link will open a window with additional information, including all of the non-author metadata:

Note that none of these fields are editable by the reviewer, and are only provided to help you conduct a thorough review.

Close this window and move further down the screen. From here you can see the Review Schedule, including all of the relevant due dates.

From here, you can decline or accept the review. If you decline, you will be dropped from the process. If you accept, you will move to review step 2, where you would be able to read any reviewer guidelines provided by the journal.

Hit Continue to move to step 3. From here you can download a copy of the review files and enter your review comments. The first window is for comments to the editor and the author; the second window is just for the editor.

Once you have read the paper and added your comments, scroll down the page to optionally upload a marked up copy of the review file (remember to strip any personal identification from the file before uploading it).

Next, you must then make your recommendation using the dropdown menu.

Your choices include:

Accept Submission: it is ready to go to Copyediting as is.

Revisions Required: it requires minor changes that can be reviewed and accepted by the editor.

Resubmit for Review: it requires major changes and another round of peer review.

Resubmit Elsewhere: it doesn’t seem like a good fit for the focus and scope of this journal.

Decline Submission: it has too many weakness to ever be accepted.

See Comments: if none of the above recommendations make sense, you can leave a comment for the editor detailing your concerns.

Finally, hit the Submit Review button to complete your task. You’ll be asked to confirm.

Hit OK. You will be taken to the final confirmation screen thanking you for your work.

That’s it! The review is now complete.

 

Nguồn: OJS Docs