Benefits for Peer-reviewers

Peer-review is an essential part of the publication process, ensuring that high-quality standards for published papers are being maintained. Reviewing is often an unrewarded task but we strive for recognition of the efforts of peer-reviewers.

Benefits when you review for our journals:

  • Receive a discount voucher code entitling you to a reduction in the article processing charge (APC) of a future submission to any of our journals. Vouchers can be claimed after you register your review activities on the ReviewerCredits.com website. Vouchers issued to specific individuals are not transferable and must be mentioned during the submission procedure. Please note reviewer vouchers must be applied before acceptance. Vouchers can no longer be applied once an APC invoice has been issued.
  • Can build your profile on ReviewerCredits.com and have your reviewing activity automatically added for participating journals. 

Invitation to Join our Peer-Reviewer Database

If you are interested in reviewing articles for one or more of our journals, please register your contact details, including your ORCID identifier, institutional affiliation, and 5-6 keywords in line with your expertise on the following page.
Would you like to review for us? Contact us via email

Invitation to Review

Manuscripts submitted to our journals are reviewed by at least two to three external subject experts. We ask peer-reviewers to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and to provide a recommendation to the handling editor of the manuscript on whether a manuscript can be accepted, requires revisions or should be rejected.

We ask invited peer-reviewers kindly to:

  • accept or decline any invitations within 48 hours after receipt of the invitation;
  • when possible suggest alternative reviewers if you decline an invitation;
  • request an extension of the reviewing time only in case you need more time to finish your peer-review report;
  • Make sure the article you have been asked to review truly matches your expertise.
  • Avoid a potential conflict of interest.
  • Keep the information you get from the manuscript you review confidential also after the finish of the review process.
  • Look during the review process at potential plagiarism, structure of the manuscript, originality, language, statistical errors, conclusion, and discussions.
  • Provide a clear and summary of your review result (comments).
  • Be critical and justify your criticism.
  • Do not recommend the citation of your own work or close colleagues when it is not clearly necessary to improve the quality of the manuscript under review.
  • Your comments should not include an indication of whether you think the article should be accepted for publication. For further guidance about writing a critical review, please refer to the following documents:
  • Check the aims and scope of the journal and make sure that your comment complies with the policies of the journal.
  • Never reveal your identity as a peer-reviewer.

As part of the peer-review process, reviewers are asked:

  • to rate the originality, significance, quality of the presentation, scientific soundness, interest to the readers, overall merit and English level of the manuscript;
  • to provide an overall recommendation on the scientific quality of the manuscript;
  • to provide a detailed, constructive online peer-review report via ManuscriptManager;

Potential Conflicts of Interests

We ask peer-reviewers to inform the editorial office or journal editor if they hold a conflict of interests that may prejudice the review report, either in a positive or negative way as far as possible before the acceptance of the invitation to peer-review the manuscript. Moreover, with the submission of the peer-review report, we ask the reviewer a written confirmation that he or she did not hold a conflict of interest in reviewing the manuscript.

Confidentiality and Anonymity

BSP journals operate only double-blind peer review. Reviewers should not reveal their identity to the authors, either in their comments or in peer-review reports submitted to the journal.
Review reports are considered confidential and will only be disclosed with the explicit permission of the reviewer.

Timely Review Reports

BSP aims to provide an efficient, high-quality and within-acceptable-time publishing service to authors and to the scientific community. We ask reviewers to assist by providing review reports in a timely manner. Please contact the editorial office if you require an extension to the review deadline.

Rating the Manuscript

Please rate the following aspects of the manuscript:

  • Originality/Novelty: Is the question original and well defined? Do the results provide an advance in current knowledge?
  • Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses and speculations carefully identified as such?
  • Quality of Presentation: Is the article written in an appropriate way? Are the data and analyses presented appropriately? Are the highest standards for the presentation of the results used?
  • Scientific Soundness: is the study correctly designed and technically sound? Are the analyses performed with the highest technical standards? Are the data robust enough to draw the conclusions? Are the methods, tools, software, and reagents described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results?
  • Interest to the Readers: Are the conclusions interesting for the readership of the Journal? Will the paper attract a wide readership, or be of interest only to a limited number of people? (please see the Aims and Scope of the journal)
  • Overall Merit: Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work provide an advance towards the current knowledge? Do the authors have addressed an important long-standing question with smart experiments?
  • English Level: Is the English language appropriate and understandable?

Manuscripts submitted to Betasciencepress Publishing journals should meet the following standards of publication ethics:

  • Manuscripts should only report results that have not been submitted or published before, even in part.
  • Manuscripts must be original and should not reuse text from another source without appropriate citation.
  • For biological studies, the studies reported should have been carried out in accordance with generally accepted ethical research standards.

If peer-reviewers become aware of such scientific misconduct or fraud, plagiarism or any other unethical behavior related to the manuscript, they should raise these concerns with the in-house editor immediately.

Overall Recommendation

Please provide an overall recommendation for the publication of the manuscript as follows:

  • Accept in Present Form: The paper is accepted without any further changes.
  • Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. The authors are given five days for minor revisions.
  • Reconsider after Major Revisions: The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point by point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. Usually, only one round of major revisions is allowed. The authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within ten days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.
  • Reject: The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and the paper is rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal.

Note that your recommendation is visible only to journal editors, not to the authors.

Peer-review Report

Peer-review reports should contain:

  • A brief summary (one short paragraph) outlining the aim of the paper and its main contributions.
  • Broad comments highlighting areas of strength and weakness. These comments should be specific enough for authors to be able to respond.
  • Specific comments referring to line numbers, tables or figures. Reviewers need not comment on formatting issues that do not obscure the meaning of the paper, as these will be addressed by editors.

More specific information about to what ethical behavior reviewers should adhere can be found in the COPE ethical guidelines for peer-reviewers or contact the editorial office/editor-in-chief.

Download the COPE guidelines on ethical peer-review