IJBEMP reviewers are expected to comply with the following ethical principles to protect the integrity of scholarly publishing and improve the quality of manuscripts.
1. Expertise and competence: Reviewers should accept manuscripts only when they have sufficient subject-specific and methodological expertise. They should promptly inform the editor if they lack the necessary expertise or cannot complete the review within the agreed timeframe.
2. Impartiality and constructive assessment: Reviews must be based on scholarly criteria. Reviewers should avoid personal, offensive, or discriminatory comments and provide clear, justified, and constructive feedback. Authors’ identities, institutions, countries, gender, or personal characteristics must not influence the assessment.
3. Confidentiality: Reviewers must keep manuscripts, data, tables, figures, and correspondence confidential. Manuscripts and review reports must not be shared with third parties without the editor’s permission. Information and ideas obtained during peer review must not be used for personal or academic advantage.
4. Competing interests: Reviewers must disclose potential financial, professional, personal, or academic conflicts of interest involving the authors. They should decline or withdraw from a review when impartial assessment cannot be assured.
5. Reporting scholarly and ethical concerns: Reviewers should inform the editor, with specific reasons, of suspected plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data, missing ethics approval, citation manipulation, duplicate publication, or other publication ethics concerns. Reviewers should not present allegations as established facts; concerns should be referred to the editor for investigation.
6. Timely review: Reviewers should respond to invitations promptly and complete accepted reviews within the agreed timeframe. They should notify the editor if a delay becomes likely.
7. Respect for editorial decisions: Reviewer recommendations inform the editor, who retains responsibility for the final decision. Reviewers must prepare their reports independently and must not contact authors to influence the editorial process.