Peer-Review policy

The Sulaimani Dental Journal (Sulaimani Dent. J.) is a multidisciplinary open access (CC BY-NC-SA) peer-reviewed scientific dental journal dedicated to disseminating new knowledge and information on all dentistry-related sciences. As you are an expert in your field, we invite you to review one of our articles. We greatly appreciate your cooperation in supporting our journal through your professional review. Your constructive comments and report will help the editor make a decision on the selected manuscript.

 

If you kindly accept the invitation, please return your report within 2 weeks.

Please provide your comments and recommendations to the editors about the quality of the manuscript, evaluate the relevance and originality of the manuscript, data accuracy, and ethical concerns. By providing your professional comments, you will help authors improve their paper to reach the standards of Sulaimani Dent. J. and be ready for publication. You could help Sulaimani Dent. J. editorial board to either accept for more reviewing or reject the submitted manuscript. It is important to alert the journal editors regarding the ethical concerns or potential inadequacies in disclosing authors’ competing interests.

You are required to respect confidentiality and not disclose the information until the manuscript is published. Please do not discuss the manuscript with anyone from the Editorial Office unless you have permission from the editor-in-chief. 

You should protect individual data. You should not use the information for your own benefit or share with any other individual or organization. 

Sulaimani Dent. J. encourage reviewers to point out relevant published work that has not yet been cited. If you have questions for the authors or need more clarifications regarding the manuscript, please do not make direct contact with the authors. You can state your questions and comments to the Editorial Board Office to handle the case. Please delete the soft copies and crush the hard copies of the reviewed manuscript, because the reviewed manuscript is the journal’s asset. Reviews should be based on relevancy, integrity, scientific strength, potential interest, completeness, clarity, and ethics in the manuscript. You should declare if you are involved in the submitted work or if you have any concerns in the study in any manner, and decline to review the manuscript. You are allowed to review the manuscript, although you may have reviewed this manuscript in another journal. Refer to the Instructions for Authors to check if the paper meets the journal submission criteria (e.g. length, scope, and presentation). Plagiarism: If you suspect an article is a substantial copy of another work, please let the editor know, citing the previous work in as much detail as possible. 

 

 
General Reviewing Guidelines

 

 
 
Deadlines

 

Please complete the “Reviewer’s Comments” form by the due date to the receiving editorial office.  Please contact the Editorial Board members if you cannot finish reviewing it at the proposed time.

 
The Review

 

Please organize your review into comments for authors and confidential comments for the editor.

 
Comments to Authors

 

Comments to the authors should include an introductory section discussing:

The manuscript document in your computer could be displayed differently than how it is actually presented in the journal computer, we recommend our reviewers to use numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) when you want to write comments on each word, line, or paragraph. This will help the authors to find the area that requires changes or modifications.

As you read the manuscript, consider the following issues and make comments in your review as follows:

General overview: Is the manuscript clear and well organized? Does it require adding more information, deleting some unnecessary sentences, or paragraphs?

Title: Does it clearly describe the article?

Abstract: Has the abstract been summarized in a way that reflects the content of the research paper?

Introduction: Does it describe what the author hoped to achieve accurately, and clearly state the problem being investigated? Normally, the introduction should summarize relevant research to provide context, and explain what other authors' findings, if any, are being challenged or extended. It should describe the experiment, the hypothesis(es) and the general experimental design or method.

Methods and statistical design: Do the methods fit the purposes of the study? Is the study design up-to-date? Are the methods as clear as other researchers can reproduce the procedures? Have the equipment and materials been adequately described? Are the study population sufficient? Has the author been precise in describing measurements? Are the statistical data explained thoroughly?

Results and data: It should be clearly laid out and in a logical sequence. Are they clearly representing the statistical data? Are the statistical data in the text and tables/figures closely related? Are tables/figures presented very relevant? Are there any text repetitions?

Conclusion/ Discussion: Do the results support the claims in this section, do they seem reasonable? Have the authors indicated how the results relate to expectations and to earlier research? Does the article support or contradict previous theories? Does the conclusion explain how the research has moved the body of scientific knowledge forward?

Tables, Figures, Images: Are they appropriate? Do they properly show the data? Are they easy to interpret and understand?

Citations: Are the mentioned references related to the subject and up-to-date?

Comments should be carefully constructed so that the author fully understands what actions they need to take to improve their paper. Also, do not write either acceptance or rejection in the manuscript to the authors. You may ask for correction and further improvement.

 

 
Confidential Comments to the Editors

 

The comments written to the authors should not be duplicated or repeated to the editors; instead, they should make a recommendation and give advice to the editors regarding acceptance and further revisions or rejection. If you have found any issues regarding a breach of publication or scientific ethics, or the authors have been unable to reveal competing interests, please provide information in this section.

 

 
The specific decision is either

 

Accept – if the paper is suitable for publication in its current form.

Minor revision – if the paper will be ready for publication after light revisions. Please list the revisions you would recommend the author makes.

Major revision – if the paper would benefit from substantial changes such as expanded data analysis, widening of the literature review, or rewriting sections of the text.

Reject – if the paper is not suitable for publication with this journal or if the revisions that would need to be undertaken are too fundamental for the submission to continue being considered in its current form.