Journal of Family Medicine · ISSN 2640-690X
For Reviewers
What the journal asks of a peer reviewer, and what a useful review of a family medicine manuscript actually contains. Read the first section before you accept.
Peer reviewers evaluate manuscripts for validity, rigor and clarity. Reviewing confers no advantage in the review of the reviewer’s own submissions.
Before you accept
Accepting or declining
Decline promptly rather than accept doubtfully; a fast decline is more useful to the authors than a slow review.
Expertise
Accept where you can judge the question the manuscript asks. On a generalist submission that may be the clinical subject, the method, the setting, or the way the work is reported — you do not need all four, and you should say which one you are reviewing from. Where a manuscript needs expertise you do not have, say so; suggesting a colleague who does is welcome.
Competing interests
Decline where you have a personal, professional, institutional or financial interest that could affect your judgment: recent collaboration or shared funding with an author, employment at the same institution, a competing study of your own on the same question, or a relationship that would embarrass either of you. Where you are unsure, disclose it and let the editor decide.
Confidentiality
A submitted manuscript is a confidential document. Do not disclose its existence or content, discuss it outside the review process, or use unpublished material for any purpose of your own. Do not share it with a colleague or a trainee without the editor’s agreement; where the editor agrees, name that person in your review.
Use of AI
Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured. This applies to every externally hosted tool, not only public ones.
Files
After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
What to assess
Whether the manuscript is in subject for this journal is the editor’s judgment, made against the aims and scope, and it has already been made before the manuscript reaches you. Your task is the separate one: whether the work is sound and whether it supports what it claims.
- Question and design. Is the question clear, and is the design capable of answering it? A descriptive study is not weak for being descriptive; it is weak if it claims more than description supports.
- Methods. Enough detail to repeat the work. Sampling, setting, participants, measures, and how missing data and confounding were handled.
- Statistics. Whether the analysis suits the design and the data, whether uncertainty is reported rather than only significance, and whether any subgroup or post-hoc analysis is labeled as such. Say plainly if you are not the right person to judge this.
- Results. Whether what is reported matches what was planned, and whether the tables and figures show what the text says they show.
- Interpretation. Whether the conclusions follow, whether limitations are stated, and whether causal language is used where only association was measured.
- Reporting. Whether the manuscript follows the guideline for its design — CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, CARE, STARD, SQUIRE, COREQ or ARRIVE.
- Ethics and consent. Whether approval or exemption, consent, and trial registration are reported where they apply, and whether any individual could be identified.
- Data. Whether the data-availability statement is present and means something.
Writing it
A review the authors can act on
- Open with what the manuscript is about and what it would add if it stood up. This tells the editor you read it.
- Separate the points that must be addressed from those that would improve the work. Number them, and tie each to a section, a page or a table.
- Address the work, never the authors. Write what you would be content to have signed.
- Do not require citations to your own work, or to any particular work, unless its absence is a genuine gap in the argument.
- Do not rewrite the manuscript. Language and style are a separate service and are not what the journal is asking you for.
- Give the editor your recommendation and your confidence in it, and keep confidential comments to the editor for matters you cannot put to the authors.
Concerns
If something looks wrong
Where you suspect plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, image manipulation, duplicate submission, an undisclosed competing interest or missing ethics approval, write to the editor rather than raising it with the authors. Set out what you observed and what led you to it, and send any evidence you have.
Concerns are assessed on the evidence, with the authors given the opportunity to respond. You will not be asked to investigate, and your identity is not disclosed to the authors as part of that process.
Revisions
Where you are asked to look at a revision, review the response to your points and the changes made, not the manuscript afresh. New requirements at the second round should be limited to matters the revision itself raises.
Independence
What reviewing is and is not
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by two to three independent subject-matter experts, and the decision rests with the handling editor.
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal, and remain independent of fees, memberships, optional services, and editorial or reviewer roles. Reviewing carries no fee, no reduction in any charge, and no advantage in the review of your own work.
Researchers and clinicians willing to review for the journal are welcome to write to the editorial office at [email protected], giving their field and the kinds of work they are able to assess.
Editorial Policies For Editors Instructions for Authors Aims and Scope