Reviewer Instructions

Instructions for Reviewers

Journal of Obesity and Chronic Diseases (JOCD) ensures a rigorous and unbiased peer review by the expert scientists in the area of research to maintain the high-quality editorial process for all manuscripts submitted to JOCD. The decision of article acceptance is judged by reviewer’s summary emphasizing the following:

  • The objective of the study or experimental design.
  • Appropriate implementation of methods.
  • Discussion of results and data analysis.
  • Novelty of the findings and conclusions having potential scientific impact.

The following are the steps that each manuscript of JOCD undergo during the process of the peer review:

  1. All submissions are reviewed by internal editorial team to ensure adherence to JOCD editorial policies and are then assigned to an Editor for evaluation.
  2. The Editor decides whether reviews from appropriate independent experts/reviewers are needed to evaluate the manuscript. Two external reviewers evaluate majority of JOCD submissions, but it is up to the handling Editor to determine the number of reviews required.
  3. Once the reviews have been received, the editor makes a decision to accept or reject a manuscript, or to request revisions from the author in response to the reviewers’ comments. If the decision is Minor Revision or Major Revision, authors will be given 21 days to resubmit the revised manuscript.

Reviewer’s responsibility

  • The reviewer should maintain confidentiality about the content of the unpublished manuscript and uphold the highest standard of ethics during the peer-review process.
  • The reviewer should inform the editor about the potential personal or financial conflict of interest, if such exist.
  • Reviewer should provide a clear and concise un-biased feedback and should avoid personal criticism or comments to authors about the acceptance or rejection. The comments should be constructive and help the authors to shape the manuscript to be the best it can be.

JOCD operates a double-blind peer review process for all the articles submitted to the journal, where both the reviewer and the author remain anonymous.

As a token of appreciation for the reviewers (as the peer-review process is purely voluntary in nature), JOCD provides a 25% discount on the article processing charge for accepted manuscripts where the reviewer is the corresponding author, if submitted within 18 months of completing the review process.