Confidentiality

Reviewers must treat submitted manuscripts and all associated review materials as confidential. Manuscripts must not be shared, discussed, distributed, or disclosed to unauthorized individuals. Information obtained through the peer review process must remain confidential.

Objectivity and Fairness

Reviews should be conducted objectively, fairly, and constructively. Recommendations should be based on the originality, technical quality, methodology, scientific merit, significance, clarity, and relevance of the manuscript. Personal criticism, discrimination, bias, or inappropriate comments regarding authors are not acceptable.

Conflict of Interest

Reviewers should disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest that could affect their impartiality. This may include personal, professional, academic, institutional, collaborative, or financial relationships. Reviewers should decline the review when they believe that such a conflict may prevent an objective assessment.

Ethical Use of Unpublished Material

Reviewers must not use unpublished information, data, methods, results, figures, ideas, or other intellectual content obtained from a submitted manuscript for their own research, publication, commercial benefit, or personal advantage without appropriate authorization.

Reviewer Expertise

Reviewers should accept assignments only when they possess sufficient expertise to evaluate the manuscript appropriately. If a manuscript falls substantially outside the reviewer's area of expertise, the reviewer should inform the editor and decline the review where appropriate.

Research Integrity and Ethical Concerns

Reviewers should inform the editor if they identify suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or falsified data, inappropriate image manipulation, significant citation concerns, ethical violations, or substantial similarity between the submitted manuscript and other published or unpublished work known to them.

Timeliness

Reviewers should complete their assessments within the requested review period. If a reviewer is unable to complete the review within the specified time, the editorial office should be informed as early as possible.

Additional Responsibilities

• Provide clear, constructive, evidence-based, and professional feedback.
• Evaluate manuscripts solely on their academic, scientific, and technical merit.
• Identify significant methodological, technical, or ethical concerns.
• Maintain professional and respectful communication with editors.
• Protect the confidentiality of authors and manuscript information.
• Avoid requesting unnecessary citations to the reviewer's own work or other publications where they are not academically relevant.
• Provide recommendations independently without attempting to influence the editorial process for personal or professional benefit.