COPE ethical guidelines

All peer-reviewers should read the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines before reviewing papers for the Inspire Student Journal.

Please declare all competing interests, which may be personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious in nature.

Our peer-review process is as follows:

• Timing: Pre-publication
• Identifiability: Double blind (the referee is not able to see the author’s details and vice versa)
• Mediation: Editors mediate all interactions between reviewers and authors
• Publications: Peer reviews are not published
• Facilitation: Review faciliated by a journal
• Ownership: Review owned by the authors of the reviews.

How to conduct a peer-review

Peer-reviewers for Inspire will be asked to complete their peer-review via our online submission system (if you have not already been registered as a peer-reviewer on our system, please send us an email expressing your interest to join our peer-review panel).

Inspire suggests that the peer-review workflow, designed by Mathew Stiller-Reeve may be useful in conducting your peer-review.

In brief, this workflow suggests the paper is read three times, looking at the paper from a different angle with each read:

Read 1: This step is to gain an overview of the paper

• Does it in fit the scope of the journal?
• Is it (or part of it) in line with your expertise?
• What is the main aim and the novel aspects of the article?
• Is the article worthy of publication or can the author make the necessary amendments to make it publishable?

Read 2: In this step, the science is evaluated

• Is the relevance of the article clear in the Abstract and Introduction?
• Are the methods appropriate to answer the questions outlined in the article?
• Are the findings of the paper presented clearly and accurately (do they reflect data presented in tables/figures). Are they interpreted correctly?
• Does the discussion/conclusion address the original question of the paper? Is the discussion balanced and not overstate findings?

Read 3: In the final read the writing and construction of the paper should be assessed

• Is the author’s story logical and cohesive? Does the author provide reason throughout?
• Does the paper contain an excessive amount of typographical and grammatical errors?

Peer-reviewers should always provide comments to the authors after conducting a peer-review. Confidential comments to the Editor may also be submitted if the peer-reviewer wishes.