General Policies and Procedures
Authors submit their manuscripts electronically via Scripture to the Asian Journal of Arthroscopy. Each manuscript is checked by the journal staff for relevancy to the individual journal. Should a question arise, the editorial coordinator or the production editor will contact the editor in chief (or an appropriate editor), who then decides whether the manuscript should be editorially rejected owing to scope, or retained for review by the journal to which it was submitted. If retained, the manuscript is assigned to an editor, who in turn chooses one or more editorial board members or ad hoc reviewers to review it.
Review Steps
1. Notify the submission’s editor as to whether you will undertake the
review.
Response Will do the review Unable to do the review
2. Click on file names to download and review (on screen or by printing) the
files associated with this submission.
Submission will be made available, if and when the reviewer agrees to undertake a review
3. Declare whether or not you have competing interests with regard to this research.
4. Click on the icon to enter (or paste) your review of this submission.
5. In addition, you can upload files for the editor and/or author to consult.
6. Select a recommendation and submit the review to complete the process.
You must enter a review or upload a file before selecting a recommendation.
If you have either a time problem or a conflict of interest, contact the editor for instructions. He/she may extend your deadline or cancel the review assignment as appropriate. If your cursory examination reveals that the manuscript does not fit within the scope of the journal, indicate that in the Confidential Comments to the Editor section of the review form.
Do not discuss the paper with its authors either during or after the review process. Although it may seem natural and reasonable to discuss points of difficulty or disagreement directly with an author, especially if you are generally in favor of publication and do not mind revealing your identity, this practice is prohibited because the other reviewers and the editor may have different opinions, and the author may be misled by having “cleared things up” with the reviewer who contacted him/her directly.
The manuscript provided to you for review is a privileged document. Please protect it from any form of exploitation. Do not cite a manuscript or refer to the work it describes before it has been published and do not use the information that it contains for the advancement of your own research or in discussions with colleagues.
In your comments intended for the author, do not make statements about the acceptability of a paper (see the next paragraph); suggested revisions should be stated as such and not expressed as conditions of acceptance.
Organize your review into three parts: Introductory paragraph, Major Comments, Minor Comments
- The introductory paragraph summarizes the major findings of the article, gives your overall impression of the paper, and highlights the major shortcomings. This paragraph should be followed by specific, numbered comments, which, if appropriate, may be subdivided into
- Major Points– which may include errors in documentation or interpretation of data, lack of data, missing information, or more information needed like follow-up or more up-to-date review of the literature.
- Minor points– like details of figures, providing better figures, providing some additional clinical details, etc.
(The numbering facilitates both the editor’s letter to the author and evaluation of the author’s rebuttal.) Criticism should be presented dispassionately; offensive remarks are not acceptable.
Confidential remarks directed to the editor should be entered in the box so labeled. Advise the editor of your recommendation for acceptance, modification, or rejection by making the appropriate selection in the dropdown menu. The final decision regarding modification, acceptance, or rejection of a manuscript rests solely with the editor, so do not state your recommendation in the portion of the review that will be sent to the author.
After completing your review, click the “Submit Review” button. You may want to save a copy of your review offline for your records. After successful completion of your review, it will be saved in your Past Reviews folder in Scripture.
The Review
Adopt a positive, impartial, but critical attitude toward the manuscript under review, with the aim of promoting effective, accurate, and relevant scientific communication.
Please consider the following aspects when reviewing a manuscript:
- Significance to the target scientific community
- Originality
- Appropriateness of the approach or experimental design
- Adherence to correct scientific nomenclature
- Appropriate literature citations
- The soundness of conclusions and interpretation
- Relevance of discussion
- Organization
- Adherence to the Instructions to Authors
- Adequacy of title and abstract
- Appropriateness of figures and tables
- Appropriateness of supplemental material intended for posting (if applicable)
- Length
- Whether it clearly describes the Clinical Relevance of the article
You are not required to correct deficiencies of style, syntax, or grammar, but any help you can give in clarifying meaning will be appreciated. In particular, point out the use of scientific jargon, misspellings of chemical names, use of outmoded terminology or incorrect genetic nomenclature, and use of misspelled, incorrect, or outdated scientific names of organisms.
Your criticisms, arguments, and suggestions concerning the paper will be most useful to the editor and to the author if they are carefully documented. Do not make dogmatic, dismissive statements, particularly about the novelty of the work. Substantiate your statements. Reviewer’s recommendations are gratefully received by the editor; however, since editorial decisions are usually based on evaluations derived from several sources, reviewers should not expect the editor to honor every recommendation. You will be asked to suggest acceptability as noted on the specific review form (e.g., accept; accept with revision; reject; modify, re-review required).
- Very few papers qualify for an immediate, unconditional acceptance.
- There are many reasons to reject a paper. In general, if there are serious flaws in the clinical report, incorrect interpretation of data, extensive plagiarism, or any organizational or English usage flaws that prevent critical review of the manuscript, then recommend that the manuscript be rejected.
- If you feel that the deficiencies can be corrected within a reasonable period of time, then recommend modification (e.g., modification; accept with revision; or modify – re-review required, if the revisions are extensive enough to warrant a second review).
Asian Journal of Arthroscopy Publication Policies; Ethics
Although the staff at the journal department and the journal editors may be able to note a breach of publication policy or ethical conduct after publication, we rely heavily on the reviewers to detect such problems before publication. Asian Journal of Arthroscopy publication policies is described in the Instructions to Authors, which are available online. Some of the items for which you should be alert include:
- Plagiarism– Plagiarism is not limited to the Results and Discussion sections; it can involve any part of the manuscript, including figures and tables, in which material is copied from another publication without attestation, reference, or permission. Note that wording does not have to be exact to be copyright infringement; the use of very similar words in almost the same sequence can also be infringement. Data themselves are not copyrightable, but their presentation is.
- Missing or incomplete attestation– Authors must give appropriate credit to ideas, concepts, and data that have been published previously. This is accomplished by the inclusion of references. Missing, incomplete, or incorrect references must be brought to the editor’s attention.
- Dual submission and/or publication– Be wary of attempts to submit/publish similar material more than once. This is often difficult to detect “before the fact,” but checking literature citations, as well as having a critical eye, is helpful.
- Conflicts of interest– If you are aware of any commercial affiliations, consultancies, stock or equity interests, or patent-licensing arrangements on the part of the authors, bring them to the attention of the editor.
Note that similar conflicts of interest on your part must also be brought to the attention of the editor, who may, at his discretion, subsequently cancel your invitation to review the manuscript. If one of the manuscript authors is at your institution, there could be a perceived conflict of interest, and you should immediately contact the editor so that another individual can be invited to review the manuscript in your place.
In summary, you must communicate suspicions of policy or ethics problems directly to the editor, who in turn will contact the editor in chief. Under no circumstance should you contact the author directly. Asian Journal of Arthroscopy has policies for investigation and resolution of such problems and these must be followed.
For any query you may contact the Editorial office:
Contact
Asian Journal of Arthroscopy (AJA)
Dr. Sachin Tapasvi
E-mail: editor.asian.arthroscopy@gmail.com
Website: www.asianarthroscopy.com
