Review Guidelines

LiLT follows the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Reviewers should be familiar with the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers before they undertake a review and comply with these guidelines during the review.

Reviewers should consider these points for discussion:

  1. Topic and content:

    1. Is the topic relevant for the journal?
    2. Is the content important to the field?
    3. Is the work original? (If not, please give references)
  2. Introduction / Background:

    Is the study rationale adequately described?
  3. Objectives:

    Are the study objectives clearly stated and defined?
  4. Methodology (where applicable):

    1. To what extent is the study design appropriate and adequate for the objectives?
    2. If applicable, is the sample size appropriate and adequately justified?
    3. If applicable, is the sampling technique appropriate and adequately described?
    4. How well are the methods and instruments of data collection described?
    5. How well are techniques to minimize bias/errors documented?
    6. Have the authors included enough information to allow reproduction of results?
  5. Ethical considerations:

    1. If there are issues related to ethics, are they adequately described? (For human studies, has ethical approval been obtained?)
    2. If there is data related to individual persons, are they appropriately anonymized?
    3. Have privacy and permission issues been taken into consideration?
  6. Analysis and results

  7. Data accessibility

  8. Discussion and conclusion(s)

  9. References

  10. Writing:

    1. Is the paper clearly written?
    2. Is the paper presented logically (e.g. correct information in each section, logical flow of arguments)?
    3. Are there problems with the grammar / spelling / punctuation / language?

These discussion points are modified from the AJOL Recommended Peer-Reviewer Guidelines.