Information for Reviewers
The Peer review plays a central role in the academic career development of a reviewer as it keeps the reviewer up to date with the latest research and stimulates their research. NOYAM adopts the double-blind peer review process for each submitted manuscript. In the double-blind peer review model, both the reviewer and the author are anonymous. This model offers the following advantages:
- Author anonymity limiting reviewer bias, for example, based on an author’s gender, country of origin, academic status, or previous publication history.
- Articles written by prestigious or renowned authors are considered on the basis of the content of their papers, rather than their reputation.
- Improves the quality of the published paper
- Ensures previous work is acknowledged
- Helps to detect plagiarism and fraud
As a reviewer, before you accept to review a manuscript you should ensure that:
- The article matches your area of expertise
- You have time to review in order to meet the given deadline. NOYAM journals normally require reviewers to complete their reviews within three to four weeks
- You familiarize yourself with the editorial policy of the journal you are to review a manuscript for. If not made available by the editor you should request for it
Assessment Procedure
In reviewing a journal manuscript you should:
- be able to give your main impressions of the article
- Assess whether the article conforms to journal editorial policy
- Keep your comments strictly factual and don’t speculate
- Use short, clearly-defined paragraphs
- Inform the editor if you suspect plagiarism, fraud or violation of publishing ethics
- Provide feedback on the article presentation (abstract, introduction, methodology, findings and discussions, conclusion, bibliography)
- Rate the article based on Originality and creativity, Interest of the topic to the readers, Significance/usefulness, Mastery over subject/ contribution to knowledge, Accuracy (Methodology), Comprehensiveness, Punctuation, Spelling and Grammar, References (up-to-date, appropriate, sufficient), Tables, Charts and Captions.
- Outline the strengths, weaknesses and other comments to be considered by an author in a review report
- Provide an overall score and recommend one of the following: Publish as it is, Publish upon minor revisions, Publish upon major revisions or Reject
Reviewers would be provided with a link to fill and submit a Reviewers report form. Once the final report from a reviewer is sent to the Editorial Team, a final decision is made about the manuscript and sent to the author.