Procedure for reviewing scientific manuscripts received by the Editorial Board of the scientific journal “Tomsk State University Journal of Biology” (Instructions to reviewer)

Requirements for the review content

1.    The review should be written on a special form template, with all negative and positive aspects of the manuscript detailed on the back side.

2.    Reviewing is confidential: the manuscript is sent on to the peer reviewer without any information about the authors. The reviewers are to know that the manuscripts they receive are the intellectual property of the authors and are not to be disclosed. The breach of confidentiality is only possible if the reviewer informs about unreliability or falsification of the material presented in the manuscript. The reviewers are not allowed to make copies of the manuscript to meet their own needs, as well as to have any other person review some part of the manuscript without the permission of the editors. The reviewers have no right to take advantage of their awareness of the content of the manuscript before its publication.

3.    The review should include expert analysis of the material of the manuscript, its objective and well-found evaluation and clearly justified recommendations.

4.    The review should cover the following:

compliance of the content of the manuscript with its title;

analysis of the timeliness and scientific character of the manuscript, whether the latter corresponds to the modern achievements of scientific and theoretical thought;

evaluation of preparedness of the manuscript for publication in terms of language and style. The language, style, material layout, visualisation of tables, diagrams, figures and formulae should be clear and understandable for the target reader;

scientific character of presentation, correspondence of approaches, methods, recommendations and investigation results used by the author to the modern scientific advances. The availability of modern statistical methods of analysis for processing the obtained research results;

adequacy and efficiency of the scope of the manuscript (text, illustrated material, reference list), either in whole or in part. Appropriateness of the illustrated material used in the manuscript and its corresponding to the presented topic;

presence or absence of plagiarism: whether the manuscript duplicates papers of other authors or any works of this particular author published previously (either in whole or in part);

quality of the preparation of the manuscript: style, terminology and language.

The reviewer makes a conclusion about the possibility of publication: “accepted”, “considered acceptable with revisions” or “rejected”.

5.    The comments and suggestions of the reviewer should be objective, critical and fair, aiming at improving the scientific level of the manuscript.

6.    In its final part, the review should contain well-founded conclusions about the manuscript as a whole and a clear recommendation about its appropriateness or the need to finalise it. In case of negative evaluation of the paper as a whole (if publication is considered inappropriate), the reviewer should justify his conclusions.

7.    The reviews are certified according to the procedure established by the institution where the reviewer works.