Peer Review Policy
Criteria For Publication
All sorts of articles submitted to the Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan are peer-reviewed specifically Research Articles, Reviews, Letters, Short Communications, Reports & Case Studies. The article submitted in the category of 'Original Research' presents scientific research that complies with the editorial policies. The experiments performed, analysis and statistical analyses should be according to the technical standards as stated in the journal guidelines and must be explained clearly and sufficient details must be provided. Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan encourages the use of simple language and small phrases. Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan expects that regardless of category, the content submitted has not been published elsewhere. If the results have been presented as an abstract at a conference, they should be declared at the time of submission.
Peer Review Model
Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan offers a double-blind peer review policy for all types of publications submitted in order to preserve the anonymity of both the author and reviewer throughout the consideration process. The authors are responsible for anonymizing their manuscript for double-blind peer review, all such details that may reveal the author’s identity must be removed. All sorts of conflicts of interest must be disclosed within the cover letter. We recommend authors acknowledge all contributors but to maintain confidentiality, the details must only be revealed within the cover letter to maintain the blind peer review policy.
Timeliness
In order to maintain timely publications, the reviewers are asked to respond within the days assigned for the review of the particular manuscript. In case of delay, the reviewers are recommended to inform the journal editor so that the status regarding the manuscript can be communicated to the authors, and meanwhile, other alternatives can be preferred by the staff editors.
Review Process
The manuscripts submitted in the Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan are read by the staff editors. Only papers that meet the editorial criteria are sent for formal review. Those papers judged by the editors to be of insufficient general interest or otherwise inappropriate are rejected promptly without external review or may be sent back to the author for the initial revision. Manuscripts judged to be of potential interest to our readership are sent typically to two or three reviewers.
The editors then make a decision based on the reviewers' advice, from among several possibilities:
- Accept, with or without editorial revisions.
- Accept, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission.
- Reject, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems.
Selecting Peer-Reviewers
Reviewers are the key professionals in the peer-review process. The editorial decision depends upon the comments of the reviewers. Once the article passed the in-house check, the editorial board select the reviewers for the peer-review process. The selection of the reviewer not only depends on the relevance of the article to the expertise of the reviewer but also the reputation and past experience of Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan with the respective reviewer.
- Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan has the policy of blind peer review process and hence, the reviewers should treat the article under process with confidentiality.
- The reviewers are supposed to give their expert opinion about various aspects of the manuscript under consideration for publication including Study Design, Methodology, statistical Analysis & Other relevant technical details.
- Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan is an international publication and so it is important that reviewers evaluate the study from an international perspective. A reviewer should take into account the main results of the study and give feedback while comparing it with the existing literature. The results obtained from regional studies should be viewed in a broader context to generalize the outcome of the study.
- Though clarity of the references is the responsibility of authors, however, reviewers are expected to do a rigorous check to assure that references comply with the guidelines of the Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan and are listed without any ambiguity.
- Besides technicalities of the paper, the reviewers should also give feedback over general issues like language, whether it is simple enough for non-technical professionals to understand or not, the authors have dealt with the topic rationally or not, authors have provided a decent background of the study or not, etc.
- The usual time to review the paper is three weeks after the reviewer accepts an invitation. Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan expects that reviewers keep their commitment to submit the reviews within the set deadline. Efficient feedback is mandatory for the fast processing of the article and prompt response to the authors.
- The comments are communicated to authors without editing. Such communication is important to improve the manuscript. The paper is not accepted until reviewers are satisfied with the explanation of the authors.
If the reviewer is unable to keep up the commitment, the editorial board reserves the right to exclude him/her from the panel of Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan without any prior notice.
Peer Review Policy for Editors, Employees, or Editorial Board Members
Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan holds the same peer-review policy for reviewers & editors submitting their work to the journal as we have for other authors. The major issue in such circumstances is that the editor may come up with conflicts of interest whether he/she should submit to their own journal or not. To make the review process unbiased and transparent, we prefer assigning 2-3 reviewers for the manuscript with at least 1 of them being an external reviewer (not associated with the editorial board).
