Information For Reviewers
MJ Cell Press does not accept or publish manuscripts for which part or whole data have been published, and manuscripts that were submitted for publication in other journals. Exceptions are given to manuscripts deposited in preprint servers, conference abstracts, and academic reports (thesis).
Guide for reviewers
For all journal of MJ Cell Press, there are two review policies as followed: single- and double-blind review. For the first policy, the identities of authors are not hidden to the reviewers while for the second approach, the authors identities are hidden. In both cases, the reviewer identity is hidden to authors. Independent of the journal selected, each paper must be reviewed by at least two peers to ensure a high quality to the candidate manuscript that will be published.
All published papers will be accompanied by a review history link accessible in open access to ensure a transparency and avoid interference during the review process. In the review history link, information regarding the reviewer and editors will be displayed as well as the strength and weakness of the published article. However, if the reviewers want their identities to be kept, they should mention, and the request will be respected.
The main roles of the reviewers are to assess the candidate manuscript submitted for consideration and improve its quality through suggestions and recommendations. Any tentative of the authors to get in touch with the reviewers directly and influence the review process will automatically lead to the rejection of the manuscript. Meanwhile, reviewers are strongly discouraging to directly contact the authors.
Reviewers’ decision
The final decision of reviewers should be: considered after minor revisions, considered after major revisions, accepted in the present stage, rejected. All reviewer’s decisions must be supported by sufficient justifications. The authors have the possibility and right to exclude a specific reviewer at the submission stage when they consider that reviewers are unsuitable for their manuscript or having potential conflict of interests.
Final decision
The final decision on a candidate manuscript to be publish or not depends on the recommendations of the different reviewers. After analyzing the authors’ rebuttal answer to any point raised by reviewers, the editor has the exclusive power to make decision even if the reviewers’ decision on a candidate manuscript often disagree. Reviewers who decision/opinion on acceptance or rejection of a manuscript differs to the final decision should not consider that their service were not properly appreciated.
Selection of reviewers
Reviewers are selected based on their expertise in the field which is generally assessed through their publications in the same research area in high impacted and peer review journals. Potential or obvious conflict of interest with the subject aborded in the candidate manuscript is also an important criterion to select reviewers. They might disclose it before making an acceptance decision to review a paper.
Before you begin
Hence, before beginning to review a paper, the reviewer must accept or decline the invitation based on the matching of the manuscript with their area of expertise and confirm that they have time to complete the peer review in the deadline. The review must accept or decline to review the candidate manuscript as soon as possible to avoid more waiting for the author or provide suggestions for alternative reviewers if they are not available.
The use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) for peer-review is outside the scope of the peer-review process of MJ Cell Press journals.
The reviewer has a maximum period of 2 weeks to review a paper and sent their comments. Additional time might be discussed in case by case between the academic editor and the reviewer. Based on the answer to reviewer comments by authors, the reviewers will be contacted to re-review the revised manuscript ensure a thorough and fair evaluation. Regarding the peer review deadline, the receiving first two comments from the reviewers meeting the deadline date will be considered. Reviewers’ comments received after the deadline will not be used in the peer review process. However, the editors reserve the right to include these comments in the decision letter based on their pertinence as additional review comments in the next stage.
Evaluation of the manuscript
The lack of novelty should not be a major reason for reject a manuscript. Meanwhile, the reviewer decision must be oriented towards manuscripts that they think are technically sound, interesting and might gain greater readership.
Introduction: the problems should be clear and sustained by literature. The reviewers must analyze the importance of the research question addressed in the manuscript and its originality/novelty. The objectives should be specific and in direct link with the statement of problems.
Materials and methods: this section should provide sufficient details to make the study reproducible. The methods used must be suitable and up-to-date as possible. The reviewers should point out the strengths and weaknesses of the method described in the manuscript. The statistics used if applicable should be described. If experiments involved the use of patients or animals, data should properly be documented.
Results: This section should be succinct. The authors should avoid repeating data present in the figures or tables. They should choose either tables, figures or images to present a result, not both. The reviewers should examine the data present in the candidate manuscript, the writing and organization of idea, tables, figures, pictures.
Discussion: the authors should explain their results and provide relevant and up-to-date references. the authors should avoid extensive citation of literature. The authors should provide practical implication of their results and a limitation section should be added at the end of the discussion.
Conclusion: the conclusion must be based on data discussed inside the manuscript and in direct link with the objective of the study. The authors should avoid non-sense extrapolation.
References: all the references used in the manuscript must be relevant and adequate. If there are other suitable references that the authors have not cited, they must be suggested by the reviewers. The references used in the paper must be mentioned in the list of references. The authors must avoid extensive citation of their papers which have no link with the manuscript.
The language used by the reviewer must not be offensive. The reviewer should make constructive criticism and suggest to authors, the improvement which will strengthen their paper to make it acceptable. For that, their comments must be clearer and more specific to help the editor in their decision on the manuscript. Even the reviewers recommend to reject the paper, they should provide an explanation of the weakness of the study, so that the authors can understand the reasons which lead to the rejection and can enhance the quality of their manuscript based on those comments.
Too short review comments without pertinence or objectivity might not be considered and approved by the editor.
Reviewers’ recognition
MJ Cell Press acknowledges reviewers for the contribution to the radiation and progress of sciences through their comments and suggestions. Once the reviewers have delivered their review, they will receive a peer review certificate validating their valuable and outstanding contribution to the advancement of science. They will receive discounts for MJ Cell Press journals and also the opportunity to publish for free in the journal after reviewing at least 10 papers. Their name will be included in an editorial of the journal that will be published every year.