Spectrum of Operational Research (SOR) requires peer reviewers to maintain high standards of confidentiality, independence, objectivity, professional conduct, and respect for the intellectual property of authors throughout the peer-review process.
Reviewers are entrusted with unpublished scholarly material solely for the purpose of providing an independent assessment to support the journal's editorial decision-making. Access to a manuscript does not grant reviewers any right to use, disclose, reproduce, distribute, appropriate, or otherwise exploit its content.
Submitted manuscripts, supplementary files, review reports, editorial correspondence, and other information obtained through the peer-review process must be treated as confidential.
Reviewers must not share a manuscript or information about its content, authors, review process, or editorial status with unauthorized individuals. Reviewers must also take reasonable precautions to prevent unauthorized access to confidential peer-review materials.
A reviewer who believes that consultation with another specialist is necessary must not share the manuscript or any confidential material with that person without prior authorization from the journal.
Unpublished information, ideas, data, methods, models, algorithms, analyses, results, figures, tables, or other material obtained through peer review must not be used for the reviewer's personal, academic, professional, financial, commercial, or other advantage.
Reviewers must not incorporate unpublished material obtained through peer review into their own research or other work without appropriate authorization and, where applicable, appropriate scholarly attribution.
The journal's broader requirements concerning the protection of unpublished scholarly material and intellectual property are provided in its Protecting Intellectual Property policy.
Reviews should provide an objective, constructive, evidence-based, and professionally expressed assessment of the manuscript. Comments should address the scholarly content of the work and should provide sufficient reasoning to assist the editors in reaching an informed decision and, where appropriate, to help authors improve their manuscript.
Personal criticism, discriminatory or abusive language, hostile comments, unsupported allegations, or other unprofessional communication is not acceptable.
Reviewers should not allow personal, institutional, financial, professional, ideological, competitive, or other inappropriate considerations to influence their assessment of a manuscript.
Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that could reasonably affect, or be perceived to affect, their independence or impartiality.
Where a reviewer believes that a conflict prevents an independent assessment, the reviewer should decline the invitation or promptly inform the Editorial Office if the conflict becomes apparent after accepting the assignment.
Detailed requirements concerning competing interests are provided in the journal's Conflict of Interests policy.
Reviewers may recommend additional references where those references are genuinely relevant and reasonably necessary to improve the scholarly context, accuracy, completeness, or interpretation of the manuscript.
Reviewers must not request citations primarily to increase citations to their own publications, the publications of colleagues or associates, SOR, or any other journal, author, institution, or research group.
Requirements concerning inappropriate citation practices are further addressed in the journal's Publication Integrity policy.
Reviewers must not upload submitted manuscripts, manuscript excerpts, figures, tables, supplementary files, or other confidential peer-review material to Generative AI systems or other AI-assisted tools for reviewing, summarizing, analyzing, interpreting, or evaluating a manuscript.
Reviewers must personally conduct the scholarly assessment for which they were selected and remain fully responsible for the content, accuracy, reasoning, and recommendations contained in their review reports.
The journal's complete requirements concerning Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies are provided in its Use of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Tools policy.
SOR operates a double-blind peer-review process in which the identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other during peer review.
Reviewers should not deliberately attempt to identify the authors of a manuscript. Review reports should also avoid information that unnecessarily reveals the reviewer's identity.
Authors must not attempt to identify or directly contact reviewers concerning the evaluation of their manuscript. If a reviewer's identity becomes known independently of the journal, authors should not contact that reviewer regarding the manuscript, review report, or editorial decision. Communication concerning peer review should be directed through the Editorial Office.
Reviewers should accept an invitation only where they have sufficient expertise to provide an appropriately informed assessment of the manuscript and can reasonably complete the review within the requested period.
If a reviewer determines after accepting an assignment that the manuscript falls substantially outside their expertise or that they cannot complete the review within an appropriate period, they should promptly inform the Editorial Office.
Reviewers who identify possible plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, inappropriate image or data manipulation, citation manipulation, ethical concerns, or other potentially serious irregularities should confidentially bring the matter to the attention of the handling editor or Editorial Office.
Reviewers should provide sufficient information to allow the journal to assess the concern but should not independently investigate the authors, contact their institutions, or communicate allegations to third parties.
Similarly, concerns regarding reviewer misconduct, breaches of peer-review confidentiality, inappropriate use of manuscript material, or manipulation of the peer-review process may be reported to the Editorial Office or Editor-in-Chief.
Such concerns will be assessed in accordance with the journal's Procedures for Dealing with Allegations of Unethical Behaviour .
SOR expects reviewers to conduct peer review in accordance with relevant principles and guidance provided by the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers .
