Reviewer Guidelines
Journal of Computers and Applications follows a single-anonymous (single-blind) peer-review process. Reviewer identities remain confidential, while author identities are disclosed to reviewers.
Reviewer Selection
Manuscripts requiring external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with appropriate subject expertise.
Reviewers are selected based on relevant qualifications, research expertise, methodological knowledge, and absence of conflicts of interest.
Confidentiality
Manuscripts and all information received during peer review must be treated as confidential. Reviewers must not share, reproduce, discuss, or use unpublished manuscript information for personal or professional advantage.
Reviewer Responsibilities
- Provide objective, impartial, and constructive comments.
- Evaluate the manuscript according to scientific and ethical standards.
- Assess the originality and significance of the work.
- Evaluate methods, algorithms, models, experiments, simulations, analyses, or computational approaches as applicable.
- Assess whether conclusions are supported by the presented evidence.
- Identify important methodological, technical, statistical, or interpretive concerns.
- Identify potential plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate image manipulation, or other misconduct.
- Declare any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest.
- Decline the review when they lack sufficient expertise or cannot complete it within the required period.
Evaluation Criteria
- Originality and significance
- Technical and scientific quality
- Methodological or computational soundness
- Clarity and organization
- Validity of results and analysis
- Reproducibility and transparency
- Quality and relevance of references
- Appropriateness of conclusions
- Ethical and research-integrity compliance, where applicable
- Suitability for the journal
Research and Ethical Compliance
Where applicable, reviewers should consider whether research involving human participants or animals has appropriate ethical approval, informed consent, privacy protection, or animal-welfare compliance.
Review Report
Reviewers should provide:
- General comments
- Specific comments on the manuscript
- Confidential comments to the Editor, where necessary
- A publication recommendation
Recommendations may be:
- Accept
- Minor Revision
- Major Revision
- Reject
Reviewer recommendations are advisory and do not constitute the final editorial decision.
Conflicts of Interest
Reviewers must disclose financial, institutional, personal, professional, academic, or competitive relationships that could affect their impartiality. Reviewers should decline the assignment when a significant conflict exists.
Timeliness
Reviewers are normally requested to complete their review within 4–5 weeks of accepting the invitation. If additional time is required, reviewers should inform the editorial office.
Artificial Intelligence
Reviewers must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts. Confidential manuscripts, unpublished data, proprietary information, or reviewer reports must not be uploaded to external AI systems where confidentiality or intellectual property could be compromised.
AI tools must not replace the reviewer's independent scholarly judgment.
Ethical Concerns
Any suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or falsified data, inappropriate image manipulation, unethical research, or other publication-integrity concern should be reported confidentially to the Editor.