Agreeing to Review:

We request first that a prospective reviewer be considered competent to review the manuscript. If one has been sent an invitation to review in a double-blind way, our database suggests that the individual is an expert in the appropriate field. However, the editorial staff may not know a prospective reviewer’s experience personally. Thus, a potential reviewer should only accept an invitation if he/she believes indeed skilled and competent to review the manuscript in question.

Evaluating an article takes time. A comprehensive review can take three to five hours. A potential reviewer should take into account whether he/she has enough time before the deadline specified in the invitation. If the evaluation cannot be completed in time, the prospective reviewer should inform the journal as early as possible. It is far better to decline an invitation rather than disregard it so other reviewers may be expeditiously requested. We seek to reduce the time from submission to the first decision letter and appreciate it if an invitation is answered as quickly as possible, even if it is declined.

A reviewer must assure the editorial board that he/she does not have any conflict of interest that should prohibit him/her from doing the review, such as working closely with one of the authors, participating in previous publications with an author; or having a professional or financial interest in the manuscript. Not all conflicts of interest will inevitably disqualify a reviewer. Full disclosure to the editor of the circumstances will allow the editor to reach a properly informed and fair decision. If a potential reviewer has any questions regarding a possible conflict of interest, he/she should contact the journal.

Would you like to be a reviewer for Arcades of Medicine? People who wish to volunteer their availability should contact the Editorial Office. Please provide your credentials and include your CV.

Confidentiality:

Reviews should be carried out in strict trust. Manuscripts under review may not be disclosed to a third party. If a reviewer wishes to request an opinion from colleagues, he/she should let the editorial staff know in advance. We generally welcome additional reviews and comments, but permission should be sought first. The principal reviewer needs to be aware that whoever else is participating in them will also need to keep the review process completely confidential. In no circumstances should reviewers contact one of the authors. Also, reviewers must not use any information contained within the article they review to their advantage without proper disclosure and citation. Reviewers should come into contact with the journal if they would like to communicate with the authors or if they have an interest in using any of the raw materials they have reviewed.

Bio-statistical Review:

Arcades of Medicine does not have a biostatistician on the editorial staff and is, therefore, unable to put every manuscript through a distinct bio-statistical review. We request our reviewers to remark on the study methods and statistics used in the research to the best of their skills. However, if the reviewers or the editor believe a separate biostatistics assessment is necessary, we may send it for bio-statistical review on a case-by-case basis. Thus, we strongly encourage reviewers to recommend this course of action if they think it is indicated.

Completing the Review Form

Section 1: Recommendation

Reviewers are mandatory to submit a Recommendation term to assist guide the editor’s decision for each manuscript. These terms include Accept, Tentative Acceptance, Revise, and Reject. Accept recommendations should be reserved for manuscripts that require no additional adjustments. If a reviewer has any additional recommendations, we ask the reviewer to submit a Tentative Acceptance (for minor changes) or Revise (for major changes) recommendation. Reject recommendations indicate the manuscript is not appropriate for the journal or there are serious concerns about the data or opinions presented. 

Section 2: Manuscript Rating Inquiries

The fundamental question the editor must eventually answer is whether or not a manuscript should be accepted for publication in the journal. To help make this determination, we ask the peer reviewer to rate the manuscript on a scale of 1 to 100 in five basic characteristics, after which we ask for an overall summary score. The five attributes include:

• Relevance to the journal readership takes into account whether or not the manuscript is within the scope of medicine. The objective of the journal is to encourage awareness of military medicine by providing a forum for responsible discussion of widespread ideas and difficulties relevant to health care. Our mission is to enhance healthcare education by offering scientific and other information to our readers; facilitating communication; and offering a prestige publication for members’ writings. We are seeking to be a forum for the presentation of scholarly work and discussion in military medicine and to encourage the development and evolution of authors in our community. We also serve up an international audience and have an interest in manuscripts from colleagues in other countries.
• Potential value or impact on journal readership is an assessment of whether the manuscript will be of use or value to journal readership. This is a rather different issue from relevance. For example, while we are seeking to publish high-quality research, there is also a role for commentaries or reviews that might be helpful to front-line medical practitioners or strategy makers.
• Originality of the work refers to whether or not the manuscript describes material or ideas that are novel in their subject, methods, findings, or conclusions. This is an evaluation to determine if the subject matter presented is something new or work that replicates previously made observations. We are particularly interested in manuscripts that address issues that are unique to military medicine. However, we acknowledge the overlap that occurs between military medicine and civilian medicine and will frequently publish manuscripts describing clinical or policy issues that are not uniquely national. Sometimes we will release case reports or other materials that may have been previously reported but are of interest to our readership.
• The quality of the scholarship is a measure of the academic quality and consistency of the work. Military Medicine has been struggling over the last few years to progressively promote the scholarly quality of the work published. Even with commentaries and editorials, we seek to maintain a high standard of academic accuracy in everything we publish. Recent issues are the best source of the quality of articles we publish. Some additional information on the acceptance rate, impact factor, and other current metrics are noted in the Information for Authors.
• The quality of the presentation is how well the information and ideas are presented. This is a summary measure of how well the authors used all the tools at their disposal to present their ideas, such as writing style, grammar, punctuation, and spelling; the use of language; the use of tables and figures; etc. In other words, this measures how well the authors succeed overall in presenting their ideas—whether the paper is readable and understandable to the broad Military Medicine audience.

The Overall Summary Score is the reviewer’s consolidated single rating of the paper on a scale of 1 to 100. This is not necessarily a numerical average of the five specific scores described above but is the reviewer’s single overall score for the paper considering the individual scores above and any other relevant issues.

Guidance for the overall summary scoring is as follows: (these criteria below also serve to guide reviewers on the individual scores)

• 0-60 rated manuscripts are low ratings that indicate a manuscript is not suitable for publication and likely cannot be improved to the point where it could be published
• 60-70 rated manuscripts could not be published in their current form but could potentially be published with substantial rewrite and revision. These would usually be returned to the peer reviewers for a second review. 
• 70-80 rated papers are possibly publishable but will require a moderate level of revision and may or may not go back to the peer reviewers for a second review.
• 80-90 are very likely to be publishable but still require some revisions and usually would not go back to the peer reviewers for a second review
• 90-100 are very high-quality articles and require minor to no revision

Section 3: Additional Comments to the Editor

The objective of this section is to provide the reviewer a vehicle to convey extra information or comments directly and confidentially to the Editor (these comments do not go to the author) that the reviewer believes will be of use in adjudicating the manuscript. Explaining on the manuscript rating questions or providing summary comments regarding suitability for publication are welcome. The reviewer may comment in this section on issues of appropriate clearances, suspected conflicts of interest, misconduct, plagiarism, or any other concerns. Comments to the author do not need to be placed in this section and they are already visible to the editor.

Section 4: Comments to the Authors

The purpose of this part is to provide critical but constructive criticism back to the authors, so they not only understand the reviewer’s concerns but also have a way to deal with the problems raised. We provide a great deal of freedom to the reviewers in how exactly they complete this section. Different reviewers use very different approaches and have quite different styles. Some examples of Comments to the Authors are available through the links below.

Some general principles of good reviewing:

Regarding communicating to the editor, remember that peer reviewers are being asked to recommend to the editor whether or not the manuscript should be published in the journal. It is very helpful for the editor to have a clear recommendation with an advocating rationale.

This recommendation should be made to the editor but not communicated to the author. Regarding comments to the authors, the reviewer should imagine themselves in the place of the author and provide feedback accordingly. While comments must often be critical, they should always be professional and constructive and never demeaning or personal.

Whenever possible, comments should be actionable. The best reviews do not just critique but suggest specific ways for the authors to address the concerns raised.

Comments to authors should be submitted systematically. For example, some reviewers proceed through the introduction, methods, results, discussion, and tables and figures, and comment on each of these parts of the manuscript in an orderly fashion. Some reviewers cite page and line numbers (when possible) starting with the beginning of the manuscript and moving through to the end.

Many reviewers today annotate the manuscript by hand or sometimes use embedded electronic notes and forward this back as an attachment. This is also perfectly acceptable.

All critiques must be supported by specific references to the text of the paper or to published literature. Ambiguous criticisms, such as “this paper needs to be more concise,” are not as beneficial.

Comments should be numbered so that the authors can simply refer to them in their response to the journal. It is not necessary to repeat information from the paper, such as the title and author's names because this already seems elsewhere in the review form. It is not required to summarize the paper.

It is just fine for reviewers to copy edit the article (and indeed this will save some of the cost of the professional copyeditors) but we are more concerned with comments on the content. As noted above, after a manuscript is accepted, professional copyeditors will assure there are no misspellings or errors in grammar and that the style is appropriate for the journal. However, copyeditors are not subject matter experts, and it is perfectly appropriate (encouraged) for reviewers to critique and comment on the writing and grammar if it will make the paper more readable and understandable.

Positive comments and feedback for the authors is welcome and encouraged.

Systematically Evaluating a Manuscript

Military Medicine receives a diversity of manuscripts, from papers reporting on hypothesis-driven research to case studies to commentaries. Submissions cover a very broad range of topics in military medicine. It is therefore difficult to generalize on how reviewers should do a systematic review. Different kinds of manuscripts will need different approaches and reviewers have various styles. Reviewers should use an approach that, while ideally corresponds to the recommendations above, is a method they are comfortable with.

For the typical manuscript describing research, a systematic approach to the review is essential (see example below). The most complete type of review may be helpful and adaptable to other types of manuscripts. There are many excellent resources available for reviewers who would like more information and guidance on the systematic assessment of a manuscript. One is cited below in the references.

• Title: Does it clearly and accurately describe the article?
• Abstract: Does it accurately summarize and reflect the content of the article?
• Introduction: Does it obviously and concisely describe the context for the study and explain what other authors' findings, if any, are being challenged or extended? Does it accurately describe what the author hoped to accomplish, and clearly state the problem being investigated? Does it appropriately describe the experiment, the hypotheses, and the general experimental design or method?
• Human or animal use: Are there appropriate statements regarding human or animal use? Was there appropriate information that a human or animal protection committee reviewed the protocol before the initiation of the study?
• Methods: Do the authors accurately explain their scientific approach, including the experimental design and how the data has been collected? Is the design suitable for answering the question posed? Is there sufficient information present for the research to be replicated? Does the article identify the procedures followed? Are these ordered in a meaningful way? If the methods are new, are they explained in detail? Was the sampling appropriate? Have the equipment and materials been adequately described? Does the article make it clear what type of data was recorded; has the author been precise in describing measurements? Does the statistical analysis make sense?
• Results: Do the authors clearly describe what they discovered in the research? Is it set out in a logical sequence? Has the appropriate analysis been conducted and are the statistics proper? If the reviewer is not sure, the editor should be advised and separate bio-statistical review can be obtained.
• Conclusions/Discussion: Are the comments in this section supported by the results? Do they seem reasonable? Have the authors indicated how the results relate to expectations and to earlier research? Does the article support or contradict previous theories? Does the conclusion clarify how the research has moved the body of scientific knowledge forward? Is there unnecessary or unsupported speculation or unfounded conclusions that are not based on the evidence presented? Are limitations adequately described?
• Figures/Tables: Do the figures and tables tell the reader, are they an important part of the story? Do the figures describe the data accurately? Are they consistent, e.g. bars in charts are the same width, the scales on the axis are logical? Examine tables and figures to see if the legends are clear and if the tables and figures illustrate the same thing that is stated in the text. Frequently, material placed in a table or figure does not have to be reported in detail in the Results section of the manuscript.
• References: Are the references appropriate, complete, and timely?
• Language and style: If an article is poorly written due to grammatical or other errors, making it difficult to understand, the reviewer does not need to copyedit the article. While this is appreciated (and saves the journal money) this may be drawn to the attention of the editor. If the manuscript contains typographical errors and/or mistakes in references that suggest a poor job of putting the manuscript together, this should be commented upon. Some manuscripts include excellent work and interesting observations, but they are so poorly written that it is difficult to understand what the authors are saying. This is a common issue with authors whose native language is not English. If the work reported in the manuscript looks interesting and/or valuable, the manuscript could be sent back for editing by a native English speaker or professional translator.
• Ethical issues: Is there any reason to doubt the plagiarism, redundant publication, fabrication, fraud, or other misconduct of any kind? Is there any reason to suspect a conflict of interest on the part of the authors?

Use of Reporting Guidelines

Arcades of Medicine does not yet require the use of reporting guidelines but encourages authors to consider and use them as far as possible. Reporting guidelines are statements that provide advice on how to report research methods and findings. Usually in the form of a checklist, the flow chart, or explicit text, they specify a minimum set of items required for a transparent and clear account of what was done and what was found in a research study, reflecting in specific issues that might introduce bias into the research. Most widely recognized guidelines are based on the available evidence and reflect the consensus opinion of experts in a particular field, including research methodologists and journal editors. Reporting guidelines complement advice on scientific writing, which focuses on the basic writing principles and styles of research reports and publications, and journals' instructions to authors.

Examples of the most used reporting guidelines are found at www.equator.com and are the CONSORT Statement (reporting of randomized controlled trials); STARD (reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies); STROBE (reporting of observational studies in epidemiology); PRISMA (reporting of systematic reviews), which replaced QUOROM; and MOOSE (reporting of meta-analyses of observational studies).

Feedback to the Journal

Arcades of Medicine welcomes all feedback and encourages any comments from reviewers regarding the review process, decisions made, or any other aspect of the journal. Please let us know your thoughts and/or concerns.