For Reviewers

The peer review process is a crucial component in maintaining a high academic quality, and invaluable in guiding the editors towards editorial or publishing decisions. Reviewers must treat manuscripts – including transcripts, video/audio clips and other information that is made available by the editor as part of the review request – confidentially and not share it with others without the explicit approval of the journal editors. Potential reviewers should withdraw from the review process if she/he feels unqualified to assess the manuscript in a fair, objective and professional manner (e.g., personal or professional conflict of interest). The review report should be written collegially and academically, and comments should be clearly expressed and based on the manuscript. Personal criticism of the author(s) is inappropriate.

The criteria for selection for publication in Journal of NeuroPhilosophy are:

• Outstanding scientific excellence and importance that furthers the field, and improves or changes our understanding of it.
• Originality: research articles should report novel work that has not been published elsewhere.
• Manuscripts that lack novelty or only present an incremental advance over previous work are not acceptable.
• Review articles should cover the latest developments in a specific area of research, place it in a wider context and provide original insights into the topic.
• Potential interest for a wide spectrum of readers; findings should be put into a wide context and be understandable by readers who may not be familiar with the subject area.
• Conforming to recognised standards of scientific procedure in terms of methodology and ethical standards

Specific questions to consider:

• Is the presentation new, accurate factually (so far as you can tell) and of international interest?
• Does the essay present the relevant documentation for its claims? Conversely, are there evidentiary materials that have been overlooked?
• Do references to the literature signal an appropriate level of subject area understanding?
• Are the title and abstract appropriate and effective?
• Whether the research methods are appropriate, and evidence is provided for the conclusions drawn.
• Appropriate length — each article should be of the shortest length required to contain all useful and relevant information, and no longer.
• References — these should be appropriate, relevant, and devoid of unnecessary self-citations.
• Does the author make clear the work's objectives and does s/he ably achieve them?
• Are the interpretations and conclusions sound and well-supported?
• Does the study both have and note implications for future research concerning and/or enriched understanding of its thematic area?

Referees are asked to consider the criteria listed above with article content evaluation check-list form. Manuscripts that are technically sound but that don’t meet the above criteria will generally not be suitable for publication. In these cases your report should provide details of any revisions the authors can make to bring their manuscript up to the required standard or recommend rejection.

Decision options

φ Reviewers are asked to recommend either acceptance, revision or rejection.

φ Acceptance should be selected for a paper that is basically ready for publication but may need some minor changes.

φ Revision indicates that a paper does not have major problems, and should be acceptable with some further work.

φ Rejection should be reserved for papers that have major problems with experimental design, interpretation or novelty, or if you have identified misconduct or ethical issues.

φ The comments to authors section of your review should be as thorough and constructive as possible.