Review Guidelines

General notes:

  • Please ensure your comments can be understood by the authors correctly.
  • Reviewers must not recommend citations of their papers or close colleagues' papers when it is not clearly necessary to improve the quality of the manuscript.
  • Please maintain a neutral tone and focus on providing constructive criticism.
  • Derogatory comments will not be tolerated.
  • Reviewers must not use AI or AI-assisted tools to review submissions or to generate peer review reports.
  • Reviewers should keep the content of the manuscript, including the Abstract, confidential.


For further guidance on writing a critical review, please refer to the following document: COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Committee on Publication Ethics. Available online.

Also check Duties of reviewers at: https://www.toms.com.hr/index.php/toms/publication-policy

 

Further comments:

  • Read the whole article as well as the supplementary material, if there is any.
  • You are expected to critically analyse the article as a whole but also specific sections and the key concepts presented in the article.
  • Your comments should be detailed so that the authors may correctly understand and reply to the comments.

ToMS published various types of papers, which are:

  • Original scientific papers
  • Preliminary communications
  • Review
  • Professional papers.

An original scientific paper contains unpublished results of original scientific research, and the scientific information is presented in such a way that the accuracy of the analyses and conclusions on which the results are based can be verified.

Preliminary communication contains previously unpublished preliminary results of ongoing scientific research that are desirable to publish quickly. It does not necessarily have to be detailed enough to repeat and verify the results.

A review paper is a scientific paper that contains an original, concise and critical overview of a field or part of it in which the author is actively involved. The role of the author's original contribution in that field in relation to already published works and a review of these works must be highlighted. The review also contains the latest information on the current state of development and direction (so-called state-of-the-art reviews).

Professional paper contains already known, published results of scientific research and focuses on their application in practice or their dissemination (educational purpose). A professional paper contains useful contributions from the field of expertise that are not related to the author's original research, and the observations presented do not have to be new in the field. They must be written in a systematic and understandable manner, in accordance with the reader's profile.

Peer reviewers should:

  • respond in a reasonable time-frame,
  • declare if they do not have the subject expertise required to carry out the review,
  • declare any potentially conflicting or competing.