For Reviewers

4.Recommendations from the Reviewer

5.Preparation of the Review Report

1.Become a Reviewer

Reviewers play an indispensable role in validating their peer review work through their commitment, time, effort, and expertise, contributing to the progression of the academic community. Forum Multimedia Publishing deeply values the dedication and professionalism of each reviewer. We welcome all qualified researchers to become our reviewers, and you can register as a reviewer for a journal of your choice based on your expertise and experience. In recognition of the valuable contributions made by our dedicated reviewers, Forum Multimedia Publishing awards the following benefits for different journals：

eCM Journal (Eur Cell Mater, ISSN: 1473-2262)

If the reviewer assists the journal in conducting high-quality reviews for 10 or more manuscripts, they will have the opportunity to become a member of the journal's Board of Reviewers.
eCM collaborates with Publons to enable reviewers to track, validate, and demonstrate their review work and expertise without compromising anonymity. Upon completion of a review for a participating journal, reviewers can select on the review form whether or not to have a review verification record added to their Publons profile.
Receive a personalized reviewer certificate, recognizing and honoring your contributions to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

The Heart Surgery Forum (HSF, Print ISSN: 1098-3511, Electronic ISSN: 1522-6662)

A discount voucher ranging from 50 to 100 USD, providing a discount on Article Processing Charges (APC) for your future submissions to the journal.
A personalized reviewer certificate, recognizing and honoring your contributions to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Additionally, during the review process, you will have the opportunity to:

Interact with researchers and scholars in your field, enhancing your professional expertise and broadening your knowledge.
Establish your reputation among key figures in your field and increase your visibility.
Access the latest literature and research findings, promoting your continuous professional development.
Strengthen critical thinking skills crucial for the review process.
Advance your career and build your professional knowledge and reputation in the field.

2.Reviewers Responsibilities

2.1 Responsibilities of reviewers to authors

The reviewer must provide a timely, impartial, scientific, and constructive review of the manuscript, assessing its composition, scientific accuracy, originality, and its appeal to the readership of the journal.
The reviewer should not use insulting language.
The reviewer must maintain confidentiality throughout the review process and should not share, discuss, or disclose any information about the reviewed papers with any third parties.

2.2 Responsibilities of reviewers to editors

If unable to review a paper in a timely manner, the editor must be notified immediately. Reviewers can make a request to extend the deadline if more time is needed to compose a critique.
Potential personal, financial, or perceived conflicts of interest must be brought to the attention of the editor. One must decline to review in case such conflict exists.
One must comply with the written instructions provided by the editor regarding the journal's expectations for the scope, content, and quality of review submissions.
Thoughtful, fair, constructive, and informative critiques of submitted work should be provided. This may include additional material provided to the journal by the author(s).
One should assess the scientific merit, originality, and scope of the work and suggest ways to improve it. If desired, acceptance or rejection should be recommended using the grading criteria that the editors consider to be most useful.
Please note any ethical issues, such as violations of accepted norms for the ethical treatment of animal or human subjects, or substantial similarities between the reviewed manuscript and any published articles or manuscripts submitted simultaneously to other journals of which the reviewer is aware.
Direct contact with authors should be avoided.

2.3 Responsibilities of reviewers to readers

It is necessary to ensure that the methods and analyses are sufficiently detailed to enable readers to assess the scientific merit of the study design and replicate the study.
It is important to ensure that the article cites all relevant work by other researchers.

3.Peer Review Flowchart

The journal editor passes the submitted manuscripts to the Editor-in-Chief/other Editorial Boards or Guest Editors approved by the Editor-in-Chief for pre-check.
Depending on the topic of the submitted manuscript, the journal editor passes the article to reviewers with related expertise.
The reviewers agree to review the manuscript or recommend other reviewers with related expertise.
The external experts make recommendations (This stage may occur more times).
Authors make revisions according to the recommendations (This stage may occur more times).
The Editor-in-Chief/other Editorial Boards or Guest Editors approved by the Editor-in-Chief makes a decision on the manuscript, for which there are four options: accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject.

See more Editorial Process.

4.Recommendations from the Reviewer

Apart from your comments on the review and responses to the editor's queries, the report should also include suggestions for the editor's consideration. Your available choices may comprise:

Acceptance

The manuscript is appropriate for publication in its present form (following copyediting and proofreading).

Minor revisions

After the authors respond to the reviewers' comments and makes appropriate changes, the manuscript may be suitable for publication. These changes may involve citing another work or rewriting certain sections.

Major revisions

After the authors respond to the reviewers' comments and make the necessary changes, the manuscript may be suitable for publication. These changes may entail either redoing experiments or substantially rewriting several sections.

Rejected

The manuscript is not appropriate for further consideration.

5.Preparation of the Review Report

Information on the scope and criteria for each journal can be found in the journal-specific guidelines.

Suggested deadlines for the receipt of reviews are given in the email invitation. If you are unable to submit a review by the deadline, please notify the editor as soon as possible.

When writing a review, the following may be considered:

The applicability of the article to the scope of the journal.
The impact and novelty of the paper.
The length of the article - does it reflect the level of scientific content and does it meet any relevant page limits?
Appropriateness of the article type.
Title - does it reflect the content and include relevant search terms for retrieval?
Abstract - does it stand alone and not refer to the main text?
Which revisions are major issues preventing publication and which are minor issues that can be easily addressed by the author, and indicate this in the report.
Whether supplementary material is provided and appropriate.
If the manuscript contains numerous linguistic, grammatical or spelling errors that obscure the meaning of the science, these may be noted in the comments.

Please inform the editor if any of the following occur:

The manuscript contains work that is very similar to other publications, or duplicate text and/or graphics.
You have concerns about the level of scientific rigor.
The manuscript lacks sufficient novelty or is incremental (list all relevant publications in the report).
You suspect that a large amount of work has been split into several short publications.
You feel that the manuscript contains personal criticism of others.
You have ethical concerns, such as plagiarism or concerns about the approval of human or animal experimentation (see here for more information).
You perceive a lack of transparency in the presentation and analysis of the data and would like to suggest the authors to provide a clearer presentation and interpretation of the data.

6.Peer Review Confidentiality

The disclosure of a manuscript undergoing review should be restricted to peer reviewers and editorial staff only. Peer reviewers are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to the manuscripts they review and must not divulge any information about a specific manuscript or its content to any other person or organization without prior permission from the journal’s editors.

Forum Multimedia Publishing will also systematically collect and analyze information from submitted manuscripts to help improve the quality of the editorial or peer review processes. Therefore, we expect all peer reviewers, as well as authors, to respect and allow the use of anonymized information for research purposes.

Reviewers should not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author. Reviewers should notify Forum Multimedia Publishing if they have any conflict of interest regarding a specific manuscript and should not review the article.