Before accepting an invitation

• Confirm that the manuscript falls within your professional and methodological expertise. Medical, dental and clinical manuscripts should be reviewed by experts relevant to the subject or specialty.
• Declare any financial, personal, institutional, competitive or collaborative conflict of interest.
• Accept only when you can return a careful report by the stated deadline.
• Do not accept an assignment when author identity or circumstances prevent impartial review.

Confidentiality

The manuscript, files, editorial correspondence and review report are confidential. Do not share unpublished content, contact authors directly, upload files to public generative-AI systems or use the material for personal advantage.

What to assess

• Fit with the JBSS aims and stated scope, originality, relevance and scientific or clinical contribution.
• Study design, controls, methods, sample size, statistical analysis, reproducibility and appropriateness of the conclusions.
• Consistency between data, results, discussion and conclusions.
• Ethics approval, informed consent, trial registration, data permissions and conflicts-of-interest reporting where applicable.
• Compliance with an appropriate study-design reporting guideline, for example CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, STARD, CARE, TRIPOD or another relevant EQUATOR-network standard.
• Accuracy and clarity of figures, tables, terminology, references and clinically important effect estimates or uncertainty.

Medical, dental and clinical manuscripts

Reviewers should specifically assess whether the clinical question is important, the population and setting are defined, inclusion and exclusion criteria are appropriate, outcomes are clinically meaningful, ethics and consent requirements are met, statistical methods are justified and the conclusions do not overstate causality or clinical benefit. Concerns involving patient safety, research ethics, consent, trial registration, image integrity or data reliability should be reported confidentially to the editor.

Writing the report

Begin with a concise overall assessment, then provide numbered major and minor comments. Explain the scientific reason for requested changes. Comments should be respectful, specific and useful to authors. Confidential comments to the editor must not contradict the recommendation communicated to authors without explanation.

Recommendations

Available recommendations may include accept, minor revision, major revision or reject. Reviewer recommendations are advisory. The responsible editor makes the editorial decision after considering the reports, journal scope, evidence quality and publication standards.

Open Reviewer Portal