Guidelines for the Reviewer

Introductory Remarks:

• Objective, thorough, rigorous, and constructive peer review helps authors improve their manuscript and supports the editorial work of Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé. Reviewers of manuscripts for our journal are either:
  • Associate editors of the journal;
  • Doctoral students or postdoctoral fellows paired with experts (part of the journal's editorial team or not);
  • Researchers selected outside of the journal’s editorial team.

• Those involved in reviewing have scientific and methodological expertise related to the manuscripts assigned impartially to them by the journal.

 

• To get started, read the scope and objectives of the journal.

 

• Familiarize yourself with the different article types considered by the journal:
  • Empirical research articles
  • Knowledge synthesis articles
  • Theoretical discussion and methodology articles
  • Knowledge-to-action articles
  • Research Protocol articles

 

• Learn about the journal's areas of interest in factors contributing to health and health practices relating to:
  • individuals, families, communities and populations,
  • organizations,
  • pedagogy in health and social services and
  • physical, sociopolitical, cultural, and economic environments related to health.

 

• Consult the diagram of the editorial process for an overview of the editorial flow in which the evaluation fits.

 

Published by the Quebec Network on Nursing Intervention Research (Réseau de recherche en interventions en sciences infirmières du Québec or RRISIQ), the journal strives to democratize access to science by promoting access to research results to increase their use and thus improve the quality of care and the health of populations.

 

• Manuscripts submitted for publication to Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé are subject to double masked anonymous peer review process (manuscripts and peer review reports are anonymous to both the submitting authors and reviewers).

• Reviewers are volunteering their time and expertise to supporting the quality of the journal and its mission and as such they receive no financial compensation.

 

Operation of the Peer Review:

• The review process goes through the Open Journal System (OJS), the journal's editorial management system. Authors submit their manuscripts in OJS. Reviewers access manuscripts and submit their review through this online management platform, where the editorial staff has access to all documents. The Managing Editor supervises the functioning of the peer review and the entire editorial flow.

General technical procedures for the operation of OJS for reviewers can be viewed here: https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/learning-ojs/3.3/en/reviewing

 

Before Accepting an Invitation to Review a manuscript for Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé:

Confidentiality

All unpublished manuscripts are confidential documents. Reviewers should not share the review or the manuscript or use it to their advantage or for any purpose other than the review.

Impartiality and Conflict of Interest

Reviews should be conducted objectively without any bias related to presumed sex/gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, religious beliefs, cultural background, or presumed health condition of the authors.

Reviewers should not be aware of the submission and must not have collaborated with any of the authors in the past six years (Government of Canada; “Conflict of Interest and Confidentiality Agreement for Review Committee Members, External Reviewers and Observers”), and not be from the same university or institution as the submitting authors. We ask reviewers to decline the invitation to review the manuscript if they share any of the above relationships with the authors or know them in another capacity.

“Competing interests may be personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious in nature” (COPE Council, 2017). If you have a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest, for example, a strong interest in seeing the research published or not published, if you hold shares in a company or competing technology mentioned in the manuscript, we ask that you decline the invitation to review the manuscript.

We recommend reading the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers: COPE Council. COPE Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers — English. https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.9 Version 2: September 2017: https://publicationethics.org/files/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-v2_0.pdf

If in doubt about a potential conflict of interest, please contact the journal editorial team: snahp-sips@umontreal.ca.

Please note that it is reasonable to accept reviewing a manuscript even when your expertise is limited to a subset of the study, for example, sampling and statistical tests. In this case, please specify in your review report the aspects of the study that you evaluated.

 

Ethical Conduct

The research must meet the highest applicable international standards of the ethics of experimentation and research integrity. A description of the ethical guidelines is given in the guidelines for authors pertaining to empirical research articles: https://sips-snahp.ojs.umontreal.ca/index.php/sips-snahp/articlestype

If a reviewer suspects ethical misconduct (plagiarism, simultaneous submission, concern for the protection of research participants, or any other ethical concern), the reviewer should contact the journal's editorial team: snahp-sips@umontreal.ca.

 

Doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows

Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé recognizes the formative value of reviewing manuscripts. The journal encourages the involvement of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows under the following conditions: a) the supervising reviewer must first inform the editorial team of the journal, b) the name, email address and position of the mentees must be provided, c) the reviewer in charge must provide mentees with information about the peer review process and ensure that ethical standards, including confidentiality, are upheld, d) one or more people may be mentored per reviewed manuscript, e) the reviewer in charge submits a single review report through the journal's OJS management platform.

 

Consultation of an expert by the responsible reviewer

The responsible reviewer, that is the person who has agreed to review a manuscript for Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé, may consult a colleague to complete the examination of the manuscript under the following conditions: a) the responsible reviewer must first inform the editorial team and obtain its authorization, b) the name, email address and position of the person consulted must be provided (because this person will be considered as a reviewer in her own right), c) the responsible reviewer must provide the person consulted with information about the peer review process and ensure that ethical standards, including confidentiality, are upheld, d) the responsible reviewer submits a single review report through the journal's OJS management platform, e) in this report, it is specified what the person consulted examined (e.g.: statistical analyses).

 

Reviewing a Manuscript:

For a review in accordance with the editorial policy of Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé, we recommend that the reviewers read the definitions and criteria relating to the different types of articles considered by the journal: https://sips-snahp.ojs.umontreal.ca/index.php/sips-snahp/articlestype

When reviewing a manuscript for Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé, the following questions are a good starting point:

1. Does the title concisely and clearly reflect the content (key concept, population, setting) of the manuscript?
2. Is the research problem supported by recent literature and is the rational solid?
3. Are the research questions and hypotheses valid?
4. Is the theoretical framework articulated to the research problem?
5. Are the definitions and concepts relevant to the problem?
6. Are the design and the methodology appropriately used to answer the research questions?
7. Are the ethical approval and the free and informed consent mentioned?
8. Is the sample size sufficient and justified?
9. Are the statistical tests appropriately used and clearly reported?
10. Are the data analysis procedures explicit and sufficiently detailed to be replicated (if needed or appropriate)?
11. Are tables and figures clear and accurately represent the results? Are they relevant for understanding?
12. Are interviews quotations sufficient and consistent with the analysis and the interpretation of the results?
13. Do the results support the conclusions?
14. In the discussion, are the results sufficiently contrasted with other studies (including recent studies, where available)?
15. Does the conclusion provide answers to the objectives of the study?
16. Are the limitations of the research acknowledged?
17. Does the abstract summarize unambiguously the salient elements of the article?
18. Is the written language appropriate and clearly understandable?

Recognized standards of research presentation.

For the review of manuscripts presenting statistical analyses, we recommend using the BMC Reviewer Guidance – Evaluation checklist for Medical journals grid for specific review criteria: https://resource-cms.springernature.com/springer-cms/rest/v1/content/19375438/data/v1

 

Prepare and Submit the Review:

An online evaluation form is available to reviewers who accept to review for Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé. This form comprises five parts: 1) General comments, 2) Specific comments, 3) Scope or potential impact, 4) Reviewer files, 5) Recommendation.

• General comments. A summary of the manuscript and your overall impression of the originality and relevance of the study, noting strengths and desired areas for improvement.
• Specific comments. Organize your comments around the major sections (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion) of the manuscript and group them into subsections specific to the reviewed manuscript. Use concise and complete sentences to clearly convey the meaning of your comments; avoid questions or colloquial expressions, as they may not be understood by the authors.
• Scope or potential impact. In addition to general and specific comments intended for the authors, the reviewers provide the editorial team with a general appreciation of the scope or potential impact of the manuscript for health research, practice, education or management: a) Very high impact, b) High impact, c) Moderate or low impact or d) Niche of interest/will not be cited. This appreciation is kept confidential by the editorial team.
• Reviewer files. It is possible to upload an annotated Word file (ensure that your name does not appear in the file properties nor in the comments in the margin of the document) of the manuscript.
• Recommendation. The reviewers summarize their suggestion to the editorial team: a) Consider accepting this manuscript, b) Consider requesting revisions, c) Consider submitting again for review, d) Consider declining the submission, e) Other consideration - See Comments. This suggestion is kept confidential by the editorial team. The editorial decision takes into account this suggestion but is not dependent on it.

 

Some Additional Considerations:

In your comments, it is helpful to distinguish major issues (changes that you believe are necessary or essential) from minor considerations (changes that may be discretionary or where further clarification or details may be needed). This helps guide author efforts and the editorial work.

If you recommend declining the manuscript, please detail and substantiate your concerns (e.g., no valid research questions, fatal flaw in methodology, or misinterpretation of results).

To help authors improve their manuscript, please provide concrete lines of work by indicating precisely what should be modified and by suggesting solutions.

Before submitting your report, it is worth taking a moment to read through and put yourself in the place of the authors. If you received this report, would you find the tone courteous and professional? The comments constructive?

You may be selected to review manuscripts for which French or English is not the authors' native language. Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé does not ask reviewers to correct the written language of the authors, but to distinguish whether the manuscript requires linguistic revision or whether the clarity of the content is seriously affected by grammatical or syntax problems. Unless there is a major problem of this type, authors will have the opportunity to revise their manuscript at their own expense. Furthermore, the editorial team will edit and reformat the article before its publication.

• The journal expects to receive the review within 28 days of acceptance. Timely evaluation allows for faster dissemination of research results. This also permits Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé to fulfill its commitment to authors and benefits the scientific community. If you need a little longer than the standard 28 days, please contact us (snahp-sips@umontreal.ca) to let us know how much longer you might need. If you decline the invitation, we would appreciate the suggestion of experts that we could consider.

 

To Submit Your Review:

1) Important technical consideration to ensure anonymity. If you wish to submit an annotated copy of the manuscript in Word format, the following instructions are required:

For Windows operating system

• Go to File > Check for Issues > Inspect Document > Select “Document properties and personal information” > Click on Inspect > Click on Remove all (personal data).
• Save the document, close it, and reopen it to verify that the document is anonymized in its properties and in the margin (if comments).
• You can consult this video “Making Comments Anonymous Word 2016” on YouTube: https://youtu.be/x2qMcFJgcig

For MAC (Apple) operating system

• Go to Tools > Protect Document > Check the box “Remove personal information from file properties on save”.
• Save the document, close it, and reopen it to verify that the document is anonymized in its properties and in the margin (if comments).

 

After the review:

• Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé recognizes the essential contribution of peer reviewers to the quality of published articles by making publicly available each year the names of reviewers who have contributed during the previous year. An annual certificate is sent to them, attesting to their contribution. As a reviewer, you will be informed of the final editorial decision concerning the reviewed manuscripts. Thank you for your time and your continued support of research and health practices.