Peer-Review Guidelines
These guidelines govern reviews for the NSRI Student Research Journal. Their purpose is to make editorial decisions rigorous, fair, confidential, and useful to student authors.
Reviewer responsibility
Accept a review only when you have relevant expertise and enough time to complete it carefully. The editor makes the final publication decision; reviewer recommendations are advisory and may be weighed alongside integrity screening and additional review.
Standard 01
Independence and conflicts
Reviewers must disclose financial, personal, academic, competitive, mentoring, or organizational relationships that could affect—or reasonably appear to affect—their judgment. A reviewer who cannot evaluate the manuscript impartially should decline or recuse themselves.
Standard 02
Confidentiality
Manuscripts, reviewer invitations, author information, data, and editorial correspondence are confidential. Reviewers may not share, reuse, cite, or benefit from unpublished material, and must not contact authors directly about a submission.
Standard 03
Evidence and methods
Reviews should assess whether the research question is clear, the methods are appropriate and described well enough to evaluate, the evidence supports the conclusions, limitations are acknowledged, and citations represent the relevant literature fairly.
Standard 04
Ethics and integrity
Reviewers should flag possible plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or manipulated data, misleading authorship or affiliations, missing consent or ethics oversight, undisclosed conflicts, and other integrity concerns privately to the editor.
Standard 05
Constructive recommendations
Comments must be specific, evidence-based, respectful, and focused on the work. A recommendation should distinguish essential corrections from optional improvements and explain the reasoning behind accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject.
Standard 06
Use of AI tools
Reviewers remain responsible for every part of their assessment. Confidential manuscripts or identifying submission material must not be uploaded to public or third-party generative AI systems. Any permitted assistance must be disclosed to the editor.
What a review should contain
- A short summary of the manuscript’s question, approach, and contribution.
- Major concerns that affect validity, ethics, interpretation, or reproducibility.
- Minor comments on clarity, organization, reporting, and citations.
- A clear recommendation with reasons, written for the editor and author to understand.
Questions or confidential integrity concerns may be sent to contact@nsri.world.
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