1. Home
  2. Guidelines for Reviewers

Guidelines for Reviewers

Peer Reviewer’s Role

As a peer reviewer of a manuscript, your input is a crucial part of the peer-review process. Peer reviewer is responsible for assessing the quality of manuscripts that will be accepted into the journal. Peer reviewers assess and evaluate the merit of the article that includes, among others, the originality and contribution to the research field, rigor, and comprehensiveness of the manuscript.

 

The Review Process

There are five steps of the review process:

Step 1 - As a reviewer, you will be notified by e-mail of an invitation to review a manuscript. The e-mail might come embedded with hyperlink invitation responses.

Step 2 - Before responding to an invitation to review, a peer reviewer should ensure that:

    • The manuscript is within their area of expertise.

    • There is no conflicting interest (e.g., being the author of the manuscript, and providing fund to the research).

    • Able to commit with the given time to provide the review.

Step 3 – Select the appropriate hyperlink based on your availability to review. This action will the response to the journal and updates the system with your response.

If you are available to review, click the “Able to review” or, conversely, if you are unavailable to review or if the article does not fall under your expertise, click “Unable to do review”

Step 4 - Once you agree to do the review, you will be directed to the submission page where you can click the file to download, review the full manuscript and declare whether you have any competing interest with regard to the research.

When you are reviewing a manuscript, please use this page to understand aspect of review. Please note that a peer reviewer assesses the manuscript and complete the review form within the given time.

Step 5 – The peer reviewer must select a recommendation for the manuscript (Accepted/ Accepted with Revision/ Rejected) and submit their feedback to complete the review process.

 

Review Aspect

Aspects

What questions to ask

Manuscript originality & Contribution to the field

Is the manuscript novel and interesting?

Does the research significantly contribute to the development of knowledge in the field of psychology?

Does the article adhere to the journal's standards?

Clarity and significance of the research

Does the author clearly justify the importance of the research in the background?

Is the aim/ study objective important?

Accuracy of the research method

Have the authors written all essential information needed in a method section?

Was the study design appropriate for answering the research question/objective?

Depth of discussion

Have the authors conducted an in-depth analysis of how their study relates to the context of other existing studies?

Have the authors clearly present the strength and limitation of their research?

Quality of conclusion

Did the author/s draw an accurate conclusion based on the analysis?

Does the conclusion relate to the study objective?

The use of literature

Reviewers should assess the number of primary literature that is relevant and recent Buletin Psikologi strongly suggests the use of primary and recent literature (no more than 10 years prior to manuscript submission).


Ethical Consideration

Peer reviewers should only review a manuscript that they are confidently able to critically review and return in a timely manner.

Confidentiality

Peer reviewers must ensure that all review processes are kept confidential. Any details of the manuscript should remain confidential during and after the review process.

Plagiarism

Peer reviewers must not use any information or data obtained from the reviewed manuscript for their own personal use. Should reviewers find that the reviewed manuscript substantially copies another work, reviewers are expected to immediately report to the editor.

Objectiveness

Peer reviewers are expected to uphold an objective and honest view during the review process. They should not be influenced by:

  • The origin of the manuscript

  • The religious, political, or cultural viewpoint of the author

  • Gender, race, ethnicity, or citizenry of the author.

Conflict of Interest

Before accepting to review a given manuscript, reviewers should declare their conflicts of interest and recuse themselves from the peer-review process if a conflict persists.