Guide for reviewers
GUIDE FOR REVIEWERS
The Spanish Journal of Medical Education uses the peer review system. The peer review process represents a vital element in maintaining high standards in scholarly publishing. This process cannot be managed without the knowledge and experience of a large number of specialists. We appreciate the time and effort that all of our reviewers spend evaluating manuscripts for the journal. We use a closed blind peer review system (reviewers' names are hidden from authors).
Submitted manuscripts are reviewed by two or more experts external to the Center. Reviewers are asked to recommend whether a manuscript should be accepted, reviewed, or rejected, providing detailed and constructive feedback that helps editors make a decision about the publication and the author(s) to improve your manuscript. They should point out if the work has serious flaws that prevent its publication, or if additional experiments should be carried out or additional data collected to support the conclusions drawn.
We use the Turnitin plagiarism detection system, but we are very appreciative if reviewers kindly alert editors to any issues that may flag plagiarism-related issues.
Reviewers invited by editors must disclose any potential conflicts of interest they may have with respect to the manuscript or the authors. All potential personal, professional or financial conflicts of interest must be considered.
The journal will not accept reports from reviewers that contain inappropriate tone, language or content. If that happens, the reviewer will be warned of his conduct and removed from the reviewer list. Hostile or unprofessional reviews will not be allowed and reviewers who do so will be removed from the database. The journal's policy is not to edit reviewers' reports, except as needed to clarify a term or comment. In any case, the reviewer will be warned if this occurs.
SPECIFIC INDICATIONS.
When preparing reports for review, we ask our reviewers to verify that the articles are clearly and correctly written, and that they contain all the essential elements characteristic of a complete scientific article. The article must be readable for a wide audience of people related to medical education and biomedicine in general. The review will be done with a rubric prepared for that purpose. Specifically, they should consider the following:
- Originality and importance of the work. Reviewers are asked to comment on the originality and importance of the work to the scientific community. The main result is not published in any other media, neither by the authors nor by anyone else. If the submitted research is not original and similar work has been published previously, reviewers must give references.
- Adaptation to the objectives and scope of the journal. We publish research results from all fields of medical education in Health Sciences.
- Experimental or theoretical approach to the problem. As experts in the relevant field, reviewers are asked to discuss the novelty of the theoretical approaches and experimental methods presented in the manuscript.
- Strengths and weaknesses of the methods used. Reviewers should assess the adequacy of the methods used. If there are doubts about technical aspects, such as statistical analysis, they should be commented. They should suggest improvements that result in an improvement in the quality of the manuscript.
- Reliability of the results and validity of the conclusions. Reviewers are asked to comment on the reliability of the results. They should also consider whether the conclusions drawn are supported by the data collected.
- General organization of the manuscript. Reviewers should comment on whether the manuscript is easy to read and whether the arguments are described in a logical and understandable way. They should suggest improvements, if necessary.
- Discussion of the most relevant literature on the subject. Reviewers should comment on the relevance of the literature cited in the manuscript. They should reference any important research not mentioned in the paper or book proposal. Likewise, there must be an adequate representation of references from the last 10 years.
REVIEWS
In the case of articles of the Review type, the reviewers are asked to recommend which aspects of the work should be improved: better motivation for research, additional data to confirm conclusions, better organization of the work or the manuscript, or lack of graphs or tables that help to your understanding. or incomplete or outdated bibliography, etc.
CONFIDENTIALITY.
The reviewer may not distribute copies of the manuscript. The results of the reviewed articles cannot be used without the prior permission of the authors. If the reviewer is not qualified for the review, the editor would welcome suggestions for additional or alternate reviewers. Please return your report within the specified deadline, or notify the Editor as soon as possible if you are unable to do so. You must submit your opinion through the Journal's online delivery system, although in exceptional cases (with the Editor's agreement), reports may be returned in hard copy via email or fax.
To obtain a manuscript that you have been asked to review, visit the Publisher's website (http: //revistas.um.es/edumed), and log into the system with the information sent by the Editor. The same message contains a link to the abstract of the manuscript. You will access the full manuscript after choosing "review agreement".
To use our checklist and carry out your review, download it from this link and after filling it out, do not forget to add it to the review menu.
