Reviewer Guidelines

  • Please disclose any conflict of interest to the journal’s editors immediately.
  • Do not reveal any content of any manuscript unless the manuscript is accepted for publication and, in that case, only after publication.
  • A reviewer who has been asked to review a manuscript previously in another context should notify the journal’s editors immediately.
  • Any evidence of plagiarism by the author of a manuscript should be reported to the journal’s editors immediately.
  • Any evidence of duplicate submission by the author of a manuscript should be reported to the journal’s editors immediately.
  • Reviewers should provide constructive feedback to authors of a manuscript and avoid the use of intemperate or argumentative language.

Helpful questions when reviewing a manuscript

Reviewers can use reporting guidelines, for example available here: PRISMA (www.prisma-statement.org) or AMSTAR - Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews (Amstar) or GRADE home (gradeworkinggroup.org) or https://epoc.cochrane.org/resources/epoc-resources-review-authors#protocol as appropriate.

The following questions can also be helpful:

Introduction

Does this manuscript address issues of importance in education and fall within the journal’s scope?

Do the authors describe the rationale for the review in the context of existing knowledge?

Do the authors provide a rationale for the type of review chosen? The method of synthesis?

Do the authors provide an explicit statement of the objective(s) or question(s) the review addresses?

Method

Do the authors specify the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the review and how studies were grouped for the syntheses?

Do the authors correctly translate the research question into a relevant set of search terms? Do the authors present the full search strategies for all databases, registers and websites, including any filters and limits used?

Do the authors specify all databases, registers, websites, organisations, reference lists and other sources searched or consulted to identify studies?

Do they specify the date when each source was last searched or consulted?

Do the authors specify the methods used to decide whether a study met the inclusion criteria of the review, including how many reviewers screened each record and each report retrieved, whether they worked independently, and if applicable, details of automation tools used in the process?

Do the authors report that the review conforms to any relevant guidelines such as AMSTAR?

Results and Discussion

If a qualitative evidence synthesis was made, please assess analyses conducted (relevance, quality, transparency, etc.) and how results are reported (clarity, transparence), discussed and interpreted (validity, generalizability, etc.).

If a meta-analysis is conducted, do the authors provide a rationale for the analysis approach and specify how they address common issues such as publication bias/small sample bias, missing data, dependent effect sizes, multiple effect size metrics, exploration of heterogeneity, etc.?

How robust are the findings?

Do the authors assess the quality of or the risk of bias (RoB) in individual studies that were included in the review? Do the authors account for the quality of individual studies when analyzing, interpreting/ discussing the results of the review?

Have the authors provided a theoretical rationale for their work, and have they contributed in any way to theoretical understanding?

Does this research make a significant contribution to the field?  What are the main contributions, and is this significant?

RECOMMENDATION

Your review may be written as a separate evaluation, following the points listed above, and/or as comments made directly in the manuscript file.

Either way, your evaluation should clearly state whether you recommend:

  1. Accept submission (i.e., no need for any revision)
  2. Revisions required (i.e., accept if the author makes your suggested minor revisions)
  3. Resubmit for review (i.e., after revision, the paper will undergo another round of peer review)
  4. Resubmit elsewhere (i.e., the manusript does not fit the journal's aims and scope)

The 5. option is see comments. We would however recommend that you choose one of the alternatives above.