Task of the Reviewer

It is recommended that all reviewers read the article titled Task of the Referee, about reviewing archival manuscripts. This article by Jan Jay Smith discusses the desired form and content of a reviewer's evaluation of a paper. Regardless of how much experience one has in reviewing papers, it is probably worth (re)reading this paper. 'Keep in mind that if you expect to have your own papers published, you have a responsibility to referee a reasonable number of papers. ... Editors can choose not to handle papers by authors who don't fulfill their reviewing responsibilities.'

As a reviewer, you play an essential role in the peer review process. Our rendezvous to administer a fair and timely review process for all of our manuscripts and to publish only papers of the highest quality is largely dependent upon the efforts of reviewers like you. Your help with meeting these important objectives is greatly appreciated.

Conduct of the Reviewer

To guarantee fairness to the author, the reviewer should abide by a number of guidelines, including, but not limited to:

1. Respond within the allotted time;

2. Provide sound, constructive reviews;

3. Assume that manuscripts submitted for publication are not meant to be;

4. public:

• Do not use material from a manuscript you have reviewed;
• Do not share material from a manuscript you have reviewed with others;
• Do not distribute copies of a manuscript you have been asked to review unless the material is already public.

5. Tell the editor, guest editor, and editor-in-chief if there are any conflicts of interest involved in reviewing a manuscript.