Reviewer Guidelines

Cad_Lin's peer review model

Cad_Lin operates a formal and transparent peer review process that takes place after publication on a preprint server. This process is led by a handling editor and involves invited reviewers. The peer review reports, including the reviewers' full names and affiliations, are published and permanently linked to the article. Your review will be published, citable, and assigned a DOI. 

Upon accepting the responsibility of evaluating manuscripts for Cad_Lin, reviewers commit to adhering to all the practices described in Cad_Lin's Peer Review Model. For further insights into open peer review, we recommend reading this article. The PREreview team has developed an Open Reviewers Toolkit, consisting of three guides that assist in composing and assessing research manuscript reviews in an unbiased manner. These guides are openly accessible for download on Zenodo under the CC-BY 4.0 license.

By actively participating in open and transparent peer review, you serve as a positive example for others to emulate. Your engagement in this process contributes to the broader transition towards Open Science.

Competing Interests

We request that reviewers acknowledge any potential competing interests that might influence their assessment of an article, either positively or negatively. Reviewers should promptly inform the editors or journal staff if they have close affiliations, competitive relationships, or collaborations with the authors. Reviewers are expected to recuse themselves if they believe they cannot provide an impartial evaluation. For a comprehensive understanding of Cad_Lin's approach to conflicts of interest, please review our Conflict of Interest Policy.

Peer reviewer code of conduct

The peer review process holds a pivotal role in scholarly publishing. To ensure that the peer review process at Cad_Lin is constructive and beneficial to authors, readers, and fellow reviewers, we kindly request that reviewers adhere to the following principle:

• Provide respectful, constructive, and honest feedback to authors regarding their submission, utilizing language that is inclusive and welcoming.
• Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the article, offer suggestions to enhance its quality, and assess its relevance and originality.
• Suggest professional language revisions if necessary.
• Verify that data and software code align with the text and are accessible for long-term unrestricted use.
• Ensure the accuracy and correct citation of digital object identifiers and accession numbers.
• Confirm that any data cited are archived, referenced, and accessible.
• If needed, offer guidance on achieving improved transparency and accessibility concerning materials, methodology, data, code access, versioning, algorithms, software parameters, and standards, understanding that adherence to best open-science practices may require additional effort.

In the context of open peer review, direct contact between reviewers and authors is not required, although it is encouraged. Engaging in a constructive written dialogue with the author, providing specific and actionable feedback, and actively assisting the author in addressing your review are the most supportive and respectful ways to improve a paper. Rather than offering general advice, strive for specificity in your feedback.

We acknowledge that implicit bias, which includes unconscious associations affecting our actions, can influence decisions in scholarly publishing, particularly regarding author gender, career stage, nationality, and other social factors. To heighten awareness of implicit bias and its potential impact on the Cad_Lin review process, we encourage editors and reviewers to consult resources such as Project Implicit and Outsmarting Human Minds.

We also recommend that reviewers acquaint themselves with the ethical guidelines for peer reviewers provided by the Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE). In cases where the editorial team identifies concerns regarding the review's adherence to these standards, the reviewer will be contacted before the peer review report is published.

Accusations of Misconduct

Cad_Lin aligns with the principles set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and follows their guidelines for addressing potential breaches of publishing ethics. Reviewers are advised not to make allegations of misconduct within their reviews or during online consultations. However, if reviewers encounter concerns related to potential plagiarism, inappropriate image manipulation, or other forms of misconduct, they should promptly notify the handling editor. The editorial team will then investigate these concerns accordingly.

Writing the Review

When you agree to review a manuscript submitted to Cad_Lin, you will receive an email with a link to the article, a proposed deadline, and information on how to submit your report.

The review should include the following sections:

1. Assessment

In this section, provide a brief summary of your assessment of the manuscript and its potential impact within the field, beyond the field, or in society at large. Make sure this assessment is easily understandable to non-experts and clearly conveys your judgment about whether the primary claims of the paper are supported by the data. Also, indicate the audience for whom the manuscript would be of interest or use. Avoid duplicating the abstract and refrain from using field-specific jargon or abbreviations.

Please summarize the significance of the findings and the strength of the evidence supporting them in one or two sentences.

2. Public Review

The public review is the central part of your evaluation. It contains your comprehensive assessment of the work, primarily intended for other readers of the paper or those considering the use of its methods, data, or conclusions.

Our aim is not merely to publish peer reviews online but to reshape how we construct and write peer reviews to make them beneficial for both authors and readers, reflecting the effort you, as a reviewer, put into reviewing and pondering over a paper.

We anticipate that the majority of your thoughts and judgments regarding the paper will be included in the public review, with only specific types of comments reserved for private correspondence with the authors.

We suggest that public reviews encompass:

• A summary of the authors' objectives.
• An evaluation of the major strengths and weaknesses of the methods and results.
• An assessment of whether the authors achieved their goals and if the results support their conclusions.
• A discussion of the anticipated impact of the work on the field and the utility of the methods and data for the community.
• Any additional context you believe would aid readers in interpreting or understanding the significance of the work.

Given the public nature of these reviews, they should:

• Be transparent about any technical and conceptual concerns but should also maintain a serious and constructive tone suitable for a general audience, taking into account the impact language choices may have on the authors.
• Address the entire manuscript, not just individual points or sections.
• Highlight where the authors succeeded, identify valuable data, and acknowledge major conceptual and technical advancements.

The public review assesses the manuscript in its current form and is independent of any specific publishing decision. Therefore, it should not include:

• Comments on whether the manuscript is suitable for publication in Cad_Lin or speculations about alternative publication venues.
• Suggestions for improving the science or the manuscript, particularly those aimed at increasing its impact, unless they help convey points raised in the review to readers.
• Open-ended questions.
• Discussion of minor issues or presentation matters, except where they could lead to confusion about the paper's main points.

Please note that editors may make minor edits for tone and consistency before publication.

3. Recommendations for the authors

Although most of a reviewer's evaluation should be included in the public review, certain types of comments and questions should be reserved for private recommendations to the authors, which will be communicated separately to the authors, the editor, and other reviewers.

This section should include:

• Suggestions for enhancing or adding experiments, data, or analyses, especially if they can enhance the impact of the work.
• Recommendations for improving the writing and presentation.
• Minor corrections to the text and figures

Do not duplicate information from the public review here. Generally, concerns about claims not being substantiated by data should be explained in the public review, while specific suggestions for addressing these concerns should be placed in this section.

However, we acknowledge that in some cases, the most effective way to address perceived flaws in an experiment or analysis is by suggesting alternatives, and in such cases, these recommendations should be made in the public review. Similarly, if there are issues related to writing and presentation likely to cause confusion or incorrect conclusions by readers, these should be addressed in the public review.

This section should also list any issues that the authors need to address concerning data availability, code, reagents, research ethics, or other matters related to adherence to Cad_Lin's publishing policies.

Interviews

Interviews should be evaluated taking into account their contribution to the field of knowledge and to the academic and non-academic community. Please also consider the quality and relevance of the questions and answers, the interview script and its motivation.

Registered reports

If you are writting a review for a registered report, please read this in full.

Comments on the manuscript

You have the option to send a manuscript with comments to the author(s), a valuable tool for specific purposes. However, it's crucial that the review itself contains all pertinent information about the article and operates as an autonomous document. Please refrain from making evaluative remarks directly within the manuscript. Instead, specify in the review itself the page and paragraph of the manuscript to which your comments pertain. You can conveniently copy and paste particular passages from the manuscript that you wish to discuss in your review.

Recommendation

We ask reviewers to choose a recommendation based on whether the reported findings or analyses are correct and valid. The articles must be methodologically and scientifically rigorous, ethically conducted, and objectively presented according to the appropriate community standards.

The recommendation to choose from are:

Accept Submission: No or only minor changes are required. This means that the aims and research methods are adequate; results are presented accurately; and the conclusions are justified and supported by the data or supporting material.

Revisions Required: The reviewer believes the paper has academic merit, but has asked for a number of small changes to the article, or specific, sometimes more significant revisions.

Decline Submission: The article has fundamental flaws that seriously undermine the findings and conclusions. It requires crucial substantial revisions for it to become academically valid.

Please do not use any other recommendations.

Get Credit

We will send review details to your ORCiD profile to give you public credit for your work. In order for this to work, you must connect your ORCID manually from your Public Profile by using the “Create or Connect your ORCID iD” button. These are the directions for authenticating your ORCID: (i) Login to your user account in OJS;  (ii) In the top right, click Edit Profile; (iii) Click on the Public tab, and click the “Create or Connect your ORCID iD” button; (iv) Follow the steps to authenticate your ORCID iD with your OJS account; (v) Click Save.