Review Guidelines

Check List for Peer Reviewers

• Before starting, ensure that you are free from any conflicts of interest and that you’re aware of our confidentiality requirements and the basic principles of peer review.
• Does the paper meet a high standard of scientific quality and credibility?
• Is the paper readable and appropriately presented?
• Are the authors credible?
• Does the paper contain appropriate referencing and any recognisable plagiarism?
• Is the paper compliant with the aims and scope of the journal it is submitted to?
• Does the paper contain disqualified content?
• Does the paper meet ethical requirements?
• Other things to remember: your review must be a minimum of one large paragraph in length and must demonstrate full critical engagement with the paper. Please don’t include explicit statements on whether the paper should be published or not. If your review doesn’t meet these criteria your review will not be used by the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor in charge.

Basic Principles of Peer Review

Peer reviewers are asked to provide thoughtful and unbiased feedback to authors to ensure that the conclusions of papers are valid and supported by the data and manuscripts achieve reasonable standards. Reviewers should focus on the science of the paper.

Scientific Quality and Credibility

The arguments and conclusions of the paper under review should be valid and supported by data reported in the paper or referenced in other papers. The paper under review should be written in technical language fit for scientific journal.

Readability and Presentation

The paper under review should read without difficulty. If the paper under review reads badly you should recommend copy editing as a condition of acceptance.

Referencing and Plagiarism

The paper under review should be free from unreferenced material published elsewhere. If you identify material that appears to be plagiarised please inform editor@materialsciencejournal.org. The matter will be referred to the Editor in Chief.

Suitability for the Journal

The paper under review should fit comfortably within the aims and scope of the journal it has been submitted to.

The paper under review should not be likely to bring the journal into disrepute should it be published owing to the paper’s content or the content of other papers published elsewhere by the same author(s).

Validation of Data

Results should be capable of being reproduced.

Authors

Authors should disclose their affiliations and work at credible recognised private or public institutions.

Disqualified Content

Papers under review containing content which is unscholarly or generally regarded as psuedo-sciences are not acceptable for publication under any circumstances. Some disqualified content is listed below but the list is not exhaustive.

If the paper under review contains any such material declare it in your review and recommend rejection.

Ethical considerations

MATERIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH INDIA requires authors to confirm that they have complied with all necessary ethical requirements around identifiable human subjects and experiments involving humans and animals, both when their paper is submitted and prior to publication.

Declaring a Conflict of Interest

You may not undertake a peer review if you are unable to do so objectively.

If you have agreed to review a paper and subsequently identify a potential conflict of interest, inform editor@materialsciencejournal.org immediately and do not continue your review. Reviewers in a conflict of interest may not suggest alternative reviewers.

Financial and Commercial Conflicts of Interest

You are deemed to be in a conflict of interest and therefore disqualified from undertaking a peer review if you have, or have had in the past two years, any commercial associations or financial interests which may be construed as posing a conflict of interest, including but not limited to consultancies, employment, expert testimony, honoraria, retainers, stock holdings or options, and memberships on boards of for-profit organizations with a financial interest in the work under review.

Professional and Institutional Association

You are deemed to be in a conflict of interest and therefore disqualified from undertaking a peer review if:

• You have worked at the same institution at any time in the past twenty-four months as an author of the paper under review.
• You have co-authored a paper, chapter, monograph, abstract or poster with an author of the paper in the past forty-eight months.

Social and Familial Association

You are deemed to be in a conflict of interest and therefore disqualified from undertaking a peer review if:

• You have a personal social association with an author of the paper under review.
• You are a family member of any of the authors of the paper under review.

Other Disqualifications

You are disqualified from undertaking a peer review if:

• You have ever been subject to a professional disciplinary hearing.
• You are not currently working in the field of the paper under review.
• You are a member of any journal’s editorial board that any of the authors of the paper under review are also members of, or have been in the previous 12 months.
• You are the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor of the journal to which the paper under review has been submitted.