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COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers

During review

Peer reviewers should:

t notify the journal immediately and seek advice if they discover either a conflicting interest that wasn’t
apparent when they agreed to the review or anything that might prevent them providing a fair and
unbiased review.

t refrain from looking at the manuscript and associated material while awaiting instructions from a
journal on issues that might cause the request to review to be rescinded.

t read the manuscript, ancillary material (e.g. reviewer instructions, required ethics and policy
statements, supplemental data files) and journal instructions thoroughly, getting back to the journal
if anything is not clear and requesting any missing or incomplete items they need to carry out a full
review.

t notify the journal as soon as possible if they find they do not have the expertise to assess all aspects
of the manuscript; they shouldn’t wait until submitting their review as this will unduly delay the review
process.

t not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript, including junior researchers they are mentoring,
without first obtaining permission from the journal; the names of any individuals who have helped
them with the review should be included with the returned review so that they are associated with the
manuscript in the journal’s records and can also receive due credit for their efforts.

t keep all manuscript and review details confidential.

t contact the journal if circumstances arise that will prevent them from submitting a timely review,
providing an accurate estimate of the time they will need to do a review if still asked to do so.

t in the case of double-blind review, if they suspect the identity of the author(s) notify the journal if this
knowledge raises any potential conflict of interest.

t notify the journal immediately if they come across any irregularities, have concerns about ethical
aspects of the work, are aware of substantial similarity between the manuscript and a concurrent
submission to another journal or a published article, or suspect that misconduct may have occurred
during either the research or the writing and submission of the manuscript; reviewers should, however,
keep their concerns confidential and not personally investigate further unless the journal asks for
further information or advice.

t not intentionally prolong the review process, either by delaying the submission of their review or by
requesting unnecessary additional information from the journal or author.

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