Instruction for Reviewers

To Our Peer Reviewer: Invitation and Guidelines for Review

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for accepting our invitation to contribute your expertise to the peer-review process. Reviewers are fundamental to upholding the rigor and quality of scholarly publications and to advancing the integrity of our discipline. As a valued member of our international editorial community—alongside fellow professors, researchers, and clinical experts worldwide—we ask that you provide constructive, objective, and timely feedback to help authors enhance the impact and clarity of their work.

1. Preliminary Assessment and Ethical Guidelines

Before beginning your review, please confirm the following:

Conflict of Interest: Do you have any personal, professional, or financial relationship with the authors, their institutions, or funding bodies that could affect your impartiality? If so, please notify the editor immediately.

Expertise Alignment: Does the manuscript fall clearly within your area of specialization?

Confidentiality: The submitted manuscript is a confidential document. Please do not discuss, share, cite, or directly use any of its data, results, or ideas in your own work prior to its publication.

Integrity Vigilance: While the editorial office conducts technical screening, as a domain expert, if you suspect any form of academic misconduct—such as duplicate publication, data fragmentation ("salami slicing"), plagiarism, or inappropriate authorship—please alert the editorial office promptly.

2. Core Review Criteria

Please evaluate the manuscript systematically based on the following three pillars:

Originality and Significance

Does the study present a genuinely novel scientific question, theory, methodology, or finding?
Is the work of significant importance to advancing the field or addressing a practical problem?

Methodological Rigor and Logical Soundness

Are the methods described in sufficient detail to allow independent replication?
Is the experimental design appropriate, with proper controls in place?
Are the statistical analyses (if applicable) appropriate and correctly applied? Is the use of key equations (e.g., E=mc²) and statistical tests (e.g., χ² test) accurate and standard?

Clarity and Structural Coherence

Title & Abstract: Do they accurately and concisely reflect the core content?
Figures & Tables: Are they necessary, clear, self-explanatory, and properly labeled?
Narrative Flow: Is the argument, from introduction to conclusion, logical, coherent, and persuasive?

3. Structuring Your Review Report

Your review should aim to be professional, specific, and courteous, with the goal of guiding the authors toward improvement. We suggest the following structure:

Summary: In 2–3 sentences, summarize the main objectives, core methodology, and key conclusions as you understand them, demonstrating that you have engaged thoroughly with the manuscript.

Major Comments: Address fundamental issues affecting the scholarly merit of the work. These may include conceptual errors, flaws in methodology, missing key data or references, or insufficient evidence for the conclusions. Please be specific about the issue and provide clear suggestions for revision.

Minor Comments: List specific editorial and presentational issues related to language, formatting, figure/table optimization, or citation details that require correction.

Confidential Comments to the Editor (Optional): Use this section for any sensitive concerns not suitable for the shared report, or for any additional confidential feedback for the editor's consideration.

4. Final Recommendation

Please select your final recommendation from the options below at the end of your report.

Recommendation	Definition & Guidance
Accept	The manuscript is of exceptional quality, meets all journal standards, and is ready for publication as is.
Minor Revision	The manuscript is strong overall and requires only minor corrections (e.g., language polishing, figure adjustments, addition of a few references). Acceptance is likely upon satisfactory revision.
Major Revision	The manuscript has a solid foundation and valuable insights but requires substantive revisions, such as additional key data/experiments, reanalysis, or significant rewriting of sections. A second round of review will be necessary.
Reject	The manuscript has critical flaws that cannot be addressed through revision, such as fundamental methodological errors, lack of originality, being out of scope, or serious ethical concerns.