This guide is written to help you peer review manuscripts submitted to Red Flower Publications journals. Reading this should answer most of your questions and guide you to complete a peer review report in a thorough and quick way to ensure that the paper is properly reviewed and published quickly. If you have any further questions, please send them to our editorial office.
Our philosophy on peer review
The authors have historically complained about the time needed to publish the paper. Red Flower Publications tries to process papers as thoroughly, fairly and quickly as possible. Therefore, peer reviewers are asked to submit comments within 2 weeks.
All manuscripts submitted to Red Flower Publications journals are subject to double blind peer review. We believe that double blind peer reviewers are the best way to obtain honest opinion about the papers. Red Flower Publications requires peer reviewers not to contact the authors directly. Before accepting to review a manuscript and throughout the peer review process, please take into account the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.
An overview of the manuscript's life cycle, from submission to publication, can be found here.
Why is peer review important?
Comments and recommendations from peer reviewers are an essential guide to inform editors of the decision to edit the manuscript. Peer review ensures that manuscripts are subject to impartial criticism and expert feedback, thus improving the authors' manuscripts and promoting high-quality scientific research and reviews. It also helps readers trust the scientific integrity of the article and make informed decisions when comments are made by peer reviewers.
The Peer Reviewer
Peer Reviewer after receiving a peer review request, it is essential that peer reviewers respond quickly, especially if they are unable to do the review, in order not to unnecessarily delay the process.
Peer reviewers should declare conflicts of interest (if they are uncertain, seek the advice of publishers) and have sufficient knowledge of the field to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the manuscript. You can find more information on competitive interests here.
The peer reviewers should keep all information about the author's identity and manuscript content confidential.
The comments of peer review should be objective and constructive, without hostile or discriminatory nature.
Peer reviewers must not enter unpublished manuscript files, images or information into public databases or tools that are not sanitized or accessible to the public and/or can store or use this information for their own purposes (e.g., AI tools such as ChatGPT).
Peer reviewers must not use artificial intelligence tools to create manuscript review reports, including LLM-based tools such as ChatGPT.
The peer reviewers are responsible for ensuring that all references in the report are accurate and verifiable.
Further information on ethical peer review issues and conflicts of interest can be found in the COPE Guidelines.
