Reviewers Guidelines

Reviewers’ Guidelines for SAJS manuscripts

Thank you for agreeing to review this manuscript which has been submitted to the SA Journal of Surgery (SAJS) for consideration for publication. The editors appreciate your time spent and value your contribution. Your review is important in order to maintain the standard and integrity of the SAJS. The guidelines below have been compiled to assist reviewers and provide consistency in the replies to authors. A member of the editorial board is responsible for assigning you and another 2 experts in the field to review the manuscript. Please reply timeously to the request as this will allow us to assign further reviewers should you decline. If you have agreed to review the manuscript, kindly ensure you return the review within the allocated time period of 3 weeks.

Before you commence the review, please familiarise yourself with the guidelines for each submission category on the web site, i.e. abstract, manuscript word count, number of Tables/Figures permitted and the number of references allowed.

Guidelines

Make your review as objective and evidence-based as possible. Search the literature for systematic reviews on the same topic which may assist you with your review. Below are 4 suggested reference resources.

  • The Cochrane Library is a great resource for health-care interventions (thecochranelibrary.com).
  • The CONSORT statement is a useful tool for reviewing randomized trials (consort-statement.org/consort-statement/).
  • Cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies should conform to the format suggested by the STROBE panel (strobe-statement.org).
  • Reporting of meta-analyses should conform to the PRISMA Statement criteria.

Always provide constructive criticism. The authors are likely to have put time and effort into preparing their manuscript. Disparaging or derogatory comments are not helpful.

Provide comments for the author and/or Editor as appropriate. The review process allows you to enter comments in 2 fields: (1) a field for comments that are sent to the authors and (2) a separate field for comments that are intended for members of the editorial board only and will not be sent to the corresponding author.

Do not spend unnecessary time correcting language, grammar, or spelling errors. If these interfere with the overall message, make a general comment to this effect. If a specific error confuses a point, make a specific comment.

Make sure that your review supports your recommended decision (“Accept,” “Revisions required ,” “Resubmit for review,” or “Decline”). Note that it is often possible to re-draft a manuscript that requires major revisions that has received a “Resubmit for review” decision so that it will be suitable for publication; however, if the method is irretrievably flawed and the study would have to be repeated in order for the manuscript to be suitable for publication, the paper should be declined.

Use the following structure for your review.

Summary: Summarise the manuscript in a short paragraph before providing your comments. The most common reason authors disagree with reviews is that they believe their manuscript has been misunderstood by reviewers. Your summary helps the editors and authors judge whether you understood the work. In your own words, include:

  • What was the research question? In other words, what were the authors trying to accomplish in their study?
  • What was the research method? In other words, how did they attempt to answer their question?
  • Was the research question answered adequately?

General comments:  Answer the following questions in this section as appropriate.

  • Is the Introduction appropriate and does it lead logically to the research question?
  • Are the methods appropriate for the research question and are the statistics appropriate for the study?
  • Was the duration of follow-up sufficient?
  • In the Results section do the Tables, Figures and narrative present the findings in a logical fashion relevant to answering the research question? Do the results correspond with the study objectives.?
  • Does the Discussion put the findings in context? Is it balanced? How do the study results compare/differ from that published in the literature? Is the interpretation of the results within the boundaries of the study limitations? Do the authors acknowledge the limitations of the study?
  • Are the conclusions supported by the findings?
  • Are the findings novel? Impactful? Confirmatory?
  • Is the paper clearly written?
  • What are the main strengths and limitations of the study?
  • Should the study be published?

Specific comments: In this section, provide a detailed list of specific concerns, including errors, lack of clarity, etc. Your list should be presented in the form of separate, numbered paragraphs, and each comment should indicate the location (page and line number) of the corresponding concern. Avoid extensive copy-editing (correcting grammar, spelling, syntax, etc.).

In addition or alternately you can use track changes on the submitted manuscript, tables and figures. Please use the comments function predominantly as this allows the author to respond in the context of the comment. Please comment on the following sections of the paper:

  • Title: Does it clearly describe the subject and purpose of the paper?
  • Abstract: Is it succinct? Does it describe the rationale for the study – are the key elements Methods, Results, accurately summarised? Are the Conclusions based on the information in the abstract?
  • Methods and Results: Do these sections provide appropriate information? Here it is important to check if correct reporting of sex or gender is done (SAGER guidelines) and if the results are in the correct format (e.g. for items like BP, pulse, whole-number scores with medians and interquartile ranges, while lab results and numbers with decimals are in means and standard deviations). All laboratory values should have the reference range in parenthesis.
  • Tables: Tables are useful if they contain information that cannot be easily summarised in the text. Are all the tables necessary, or is the information also given in the text? Could several tables be combined? Are clarifications or additional columns needed? Please suggest changes if you believe that they are indicated. Do you have suggestions that would present the information more clearly? Be aware of the number of allocated Tables/Figures permitted for each submission category.
  • Figures: Illustrations require a great deal of space. Are they all appropriate and necessary? If not, which ones would you delete? Are the legends adequate?
  • References: Is the bibliography complete or excessive? If incomplete, provide citations that you think are relevant. Are the referenced in the correct style and format for the SAJS?

Select your recommended decision: Manuscripts should be classified into 1 of 4 categories, which appear in the drop-down menu in reviewer recommendation screen.

  • “Accept submission” should only be selected if the paper is suitable for the SAJS and will be of value to the readers. The paper is methodologically sound, educational, informative and contains all the information needed to justify its conclusions. Revisions suggested should only be of a grammatical nature that can be addressed at the copyediting phase.
  • “Revisions required” should be selected if the paper will be of value to readers but has flaws that must be remedied before being accepted. Much of the information concerning “Accept submission” papers is applicable here. The essential difference between “Accept submission” and “Revisions required” papers is that the latter is incomplete and requires additional data, detail, or further data analysis. The reviewer should believe that whatever is missing can be provided by the authors.
  • “Resubmit for review” should be selected when the manuscript in its existing form would be of interest to readers but the reviewer has serious concerns related to the methodology, interpretation or validity of the conclusions drawn. The invitation to undertake the major revisions required when this category is selected does not imply that the paper will be accepted after revision. The author is invited to resubmit the paper for review if they are able to address these concerns. The assigned member of the editorial board has the discretion to decide whether to obtain a further review for this category.
  • “Decline” should be selected if the paper should not be published in the SAJS. Before assigning a “Decline” classification the reviewer must believe strongly that their reservations concerning the manuscript are valid, that the authors cannot correct the deficiencies and hence the subject matter is not of sufficient educational value to be published. The reviewer should articulate 2 or 3 major reasons why they believe the manuscript should be rejected. The reviewer should be objective and especially careful not to write pejorative comments to the author when rendering this decision.

Correspondence to authors

After all the reviews have been received, the handling editor will compose a letter to the corresponding author. The purposes of that letter are to inform the author of the decision and to provide the author with instructive feedback. All the reviewers’ comments which the editor may paraphrase are provided in the decision letter. Track changed files will be anonymised and sent with the decision letter.

Acknowledgement of appreciation to reviewers

After submitting your review, you will receive an acknowledgement, thanking you for your time and effort in completing your review.