Journal of Sleep And Sleep Disorder Research · For reviewers
For Reviewers
What the journal asks of a reviewer, from the invitation through to what happens to the files afterwards.
01 · Invitation
Accepting or declining
An invitation carries the title and abstract so you can judge two things before agreeing: whether the work is close enough to your own expertise, and whether you can assess it independently.
- Accept where the method and the subject are both within reach of your own work. A review that can only judge half a manuscript is more useful declined, or accepted with that limit stated plainly.
- Decline where a competing interest would affect your judgment: a financial or commercial stake, a current or recent collaboration, a supervisory relationship, or a directly competing project of your own.
- Say so if you are close to the subject but not conflicted — the editor can weigh that.
- Suggest an alternative reviewer where you decline and know someone better placed.
- Tell the editor early if the manuscript will take longer than you expected, so the authors are not left waiting on a silent file.
02 · Confidentiality
Handling the manuscript
A manuscript under review is unpublished work belonging to its authors.
- While you hold it
- Its content, its findings and the fact of its submission stay confidential. Do not share the manuscript or discuss it outside the review, and consult the editor first if you want to involve a colleague or a trainee — where that is agreed, name them in your report.
- Blinding
- Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors.
- Using AI
- Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.
- After the review
- After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
03 · Assessing
What to assess, and how it varies
The questions that matter depend on what kind of study it is. Assess what the design in front of you actually rests on.
- 01The question and its fitWhat is being asked, whether sleep, a sleep disorder or a circadian question is genuinely part of it, and whether the manuscript answers the question it sets.
- 02Design and samplingWhether the design can support the claim: allocation and control in an experiment, comparison group and confounding in an observational study, search and selection in a review, and who was recruited, from where, and who was left out.
- 03MeasurementWhether the sleep or circadian measurement is fit for the question, described well enough to repeat, and scored by a stated rule. The right instrument depends on the question — a diary, an actigraph, a questionnaire, a polysomnogram or a laboratory assay may each be the correct choice.
- 04AnalysisWhether the statistical approach suits the data and the design, whether assumptions are checked, how missing data are handled, and whether the analysis reported is the analysis that was planned.
- 05Reporting and reproducibilityWhether a reader could repeat the work from what is written: software and versions, parameters, derived-variable definitions, and the data and code statements.
- 06Evidence and claimWhether the conclusions stay inside what the evidence supports. This is where most manuscripts need work — an association described as an effect, a pilot result described as clinical guidance, a single-site finding generalized too far.
- 07LimitationsWhether the limitations that matter are named and their consequences acknowledged.
- 08Ethics and integrityWhether approval, consent and registration are reported where the design requires them, and whether anything in the manuscript raises an integrity concern worth telling the editor about.
04 · The report
Writing a useful report
A report is written for two readers: the editor deciding, and the authors revising.
- Open with what the study does and what you take its main contribution to be, so the authors can see how you read it.
- Separate the points that determine the outcome from the ones that would improve the paper.
- Give a specific reason for each point, and say what would resolve it.
- Number your points so the authors can answer them one by one.
- Cite evidence where you assert something the authors have got wrong.
- Keep the tone the one you would want on your own work.
- Send judgments about suitability to the editor in the confidential comments rather than to the authors.
- Recommend an outcome, and say plainly how confident you are in it.
The criteria the editor will weigh your report against are editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
05 · Standing
Reviewing and your own work
Reviewing carries no advantage in review
Reviewing for the journal confers no advantage in the review or acceptance of a reviewer's own submissions. Those manuscripts are screened, assigned and decided exactly as any other manuscript is.
Editorial decisions are independent of payment, membership and any service purchased from the publisher.
The full conflict, confidentiality and decision rules are in the editorial policies.
Related pages
Before you start
The pages below carry what the authors were asked to do, and the criteria their manuscript is being judged against.