Choosing to serve as a reviewer for a journal published by the Baishideng Publishing Group (BPG) means placing compliance with scientific norms and ethical standards at the forefront. 

Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers stay informed about the latest developments and cutting-edge research in their field throughout their time reviewing manuscripts for potential publication. In that vein, their peer review activities enable them to contribute to the growth of substantive literature directly, driving the field toward further innovations and new directions. Each peer-review report, completed by Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers, plays a key role in the editor's subsequent decision-making for the manuscript. Technically, these reports are crucial in guiding authors' revisions of their work, so that the paper’s overall academic quality and its potential impact on the field will be enhanced.

To standardize the manuscript peer-review activity of Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers, BPG has adopted a registration system for Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers to ensure that only credible, high-quality studies will be published.

3.1 Editorial Board Members: Professional status as Assistant Professor or Associate Professor or above; academically active scholar in the field; a good record of publications and citations, especially in the past 5 years, which is suggestive of ongoing and progressive academic activities; and willingness to conduct manuscript peer review in a stipulated period of time, which is usually 14 days.

3.2 Peer Reviewers: Educational status of MD or PhD in basic or clinical medicine; and willingness to conduct manuscript peer review.

3.3 Reviewer Recognition: To acknowledge the contributions of reviewers, BPG assigns each reviewer an Academic Contribution Identifier (ACID) on its Reference Citation Analysis platform and creates an ACID Website to showcase the reviewer's academic contributions. See: https://referencecitationanalysis.com/searchscholar.

Peer Reviewers are encouraged to follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and flowchart when peer-reviewing a manuscript.

4.1 Conflict of Interest: Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers will have no conflict of interest with any author of the manuscript that they are invited to review, will come from institutions that are different from those of the authors, and will not have published articles as a co-author of any author of the manuscript. If there is any conflict of interest, the Editorial Board Member or Peer Reviewer should immediately decline the invitation for review. If the identification occurs after the paper is reviewed, it will be formally noted that a reviewer reviewed a manuscript despite a potential conflict of interest with one or more of the authors, then such reviewer may be flagged and excluded from the journal’s peer reviewer’s database.

4.2 Confidentiality: Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers shall not share any content of the reviewed manuscript with others outside the review process. They shall not submit for publication or publish the content of the unpublished manuscript or research results in any circumstance during or after the review process is completed.

4.3 Appropriation of Manuscript Content: Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers shall not, without the permission of the manuscript’s authors and editors, use the content of the unpublished manuscripts they have reviewed for purposes unrelated to the review process, such as a reference in their own manuscript, until it has been published.

4.4 Seeking Improper Benefits: Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers shall not contact any of the authors directly or use confidential information in the review process to obtain personal or professional benefits. They shall not use review rights to seek improper benefits.

4.5 Policy on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Usage: Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are prohibited from using AI tools to generate peer-review reports. However, they are allowed to use AI tools to assist in checking and correcting grammar and other non-content-related errors (spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc.) in the manuscript peer-review reports, and in testing for potential academic misconduct such as plagiarism and duplicated publication. Specifically, AI tools are allowed as supplementary tools but not as substitutes for human intellect. The Editorial Office will verify, through a combination of manual and technical tools, whether manuscript peer-review reports include any outputs from AI tools. If it is identified that a reviewer generated a full or part of the peer-review report using AI tools, then that reviewer will be flagged and excluded from the journal’s peer reviewer database, and the peer-review report itself will be deemed invalid.

4.6 Recommended Relevant Citations: Reviewers generally shall not recommend authors cite articles of their own and/or their colleagues, and/or articles from journals associated with themselves. However, in cases where there are essential articles that the authors need to cite, the reviewer should provide a meticulously reasoned explanation for his/her recommendation of the specific article so that the authors can decide independently whether or not to cite the article.

5.1 Initial Checks: Upon submission, an Editor conducts Initial Checks to verify the following: (1) Whether the manuscript's topic falls within the scope of the journal; (2) Whether the authors' institutional affiliations and departments match the research topic; (3) For manuscripts involving animal experiments or human studies, whether the authors have provided valid and ethical approval documentation; (4) Whether the manuscript is complete, including figures, tables, and references; and (5) Whether there is any evidence of academic misconduct, such as paper mill involvement, batch submissions, ghostwriting, or plagiarism.

5.2 Initial Review: If a manuscript passes the Initial Checks, the Editor assigns it to either the Editor-in-Chief, an Executive Associate Editor-in-Chief, or an Associate Editor based upon its research topic. That individual then conducts a preliminary assessment of the manuscript's academic quality and provides initial review comments. Manuscripts that pass the Initial Review proceed to the external peer review step; those that do not pass are rejected.

5.3 Selecting Peer Reviewers: If a manuscript passes the Initial Review, the Editor invites more than 2 external peer reviewers with expertise in the manuscript's research topic and specialized field to conduct a single-blind peer review.

Peer review is the process by which an academic manuscript is reviewed by experts in the relevant field, i.e. external reviewers whose service is performed before a decision is made on whether to publish the manuscript or not. All BPG journals use the single-blind peer review model, and all manuscripts submitted to BPG journals (including those authored by BPG editorial staffs/editors and excepting some Correction and Retraction Note manuscripts) are required to pass strict external peer review before they can be published. Editors are not involved in decisions about manuscripts which they have written themselves, have been written by family members or colleagues, or which relate to products or services in which the editor has an interest.

6.1 Title: Is the most important and compelling information included in the title? Is the title of the manuscript self-explanatory?

6.2 Abstract: Does the content highlight the importance of the manuscript’s topic to the field, the purpose of the research, the uniqueness of the method, and the novelty, significance, and impact of the results?

6.3 Key Words: Do the keywords express the characteristic elements and fully reflect the central content of the manuscript?

6.4 Introduction: Does the Introduction describe the consensus and theory on the topic, explain any current unknown issues or questions about the topic, propose critical issues that need to be addressed, and state the purpose of the study?

6.5 Materials and Methods/Experimental Procedure: Is the novelty of the new method, new technique, or algorithm described in detail? Is each step of the experiment described in detail so that readers can repeat the experiment? Do the authors state that an ethics committee has approved the experiment? Is statistical probability analysis clearly stated?

6.6 Results: Are the results presented new and understandable to readers? Are the results directly related to the methods described (i.e. reproducible)? Did the authors discover a new method that improves on an existing one? Are the pictures and illustrations in the manuscript sufficiently self-explanatory? Does the manuscript display the data correctly? Is the manuscript easy to interpret and understand? Are the statistics and interpretation of the data appropriate and consistent throughout the manuscript? Are the figures and tables numbered in order of appearance in the manuscript? Are the tables three-line* ones? *Three-line tables include table numbers, table titles, table heads, table bodies, and table footnotes. Do pictures* of the same theme use a single theme, and are the annotations for each picture stated separately? *Pictures and line drawings generally consist of pictures/drawings, picture/drawing numbers, picture/drawing titles, and picture/drawing notes.

6.7 Discussion: Does the Discussion adequately explain the results? Compared with other studies, what problems should have been solved in the study? Are the results of the study compared with those of previous studies? Are discoveries, methods, and techniques as well as the implications of the findings discussed? Are the limitations of the study acknowledged and discussed?

6.8 Conclusion: Is the comprehensive manuscript writing, from the Title to the Conclusion, logical and coherent? Is the hypothesis of the study valid? Do the results of the study support the conclusion? Is the most significant finding of the study expressed clearly? Are the implications of the study for the future expressed?

6.9 Acknowledgments: Acknowledgments should be expressed to institutions or individuals who have contributed to, supported, or helped with the study but do not meet the full qualifications for authorship as outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The name of any commercial company is not allowed to be present in this section.

6.10 References: Are the references of the manuscript consistent with the subject of the manuscript? Does the manuscript include references to important relevant articles published within the last 3-10 years? Are important references missing from the manuscript’s reference list? Do the authors cite their own published articles that are irrelevant to the subject of the manuscript? Are references sequentially cited in the text?

6.11 Abbreviations: Are abbreviations used correctly in the manuscript? Standard abbreviations should be defined upon first mention in each standalone portion of the manuscript (i.e. Abstract, Core Tip, and main body of the manuscript). Certain commonly used abbreviations, such as DNA, RNA, HIV, LD50, PCR, HBV, ECG, WBC, RBC, CT, ESR, CSF, IgG, ELISA, PBS, ATP, EDTA, and mAb, do not need to be defined and can be used directly.

6.12 Language: Are there a large number of spelling errors, grammatical errors, tense errors, singular and plural errors, punctuation errors, or terminology errors in the manuscript?

6.13 Manuscript Type: Is the content of the manuscript consistent with the type of the manuscript? Manuscript types include Editorial, Frontier, Guidelines, Field of Vision, Opinion Review, Expert Consensus, Evidence Review, Review, Minireview, Case Control Study, Retrospective Cohort Study, Retrospective Study, Clinical Trials Study, Observational Study, Prospective Study, Randomized Controlled Trial, Randomized Clinical Trial, Basic Study, Evidence-Based Medicine, Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, Scientometrics, Case Report, Correspondence, Correction, and Retraction Note. For more information on the manuscript types, please visit https://www.wjgnet.com/BPG/gerinfo/204.

6.14 Scientific Research Ethics: Was the study approved by an institutional ethics committee?

If the study is a scientific and/or technological activity involving humans, including tests, surveys, and observational studies involving the use of human genes, human embryos, human biological samples, personal information, etc., it must be approved by an institutional ethics committee, and a reference number for such should be cited.

If the study is a scientific and/or technological activity involving organ transplantations, it must be approved by an institutional ethics committee. In addition, for human organ transplantation studies, the authors must provide a statement that affirms their experiments were performed with prior obtainment of informed consent from each participant, along with the name of the institution(s)/clinic(s)/department(s) from which the organ(s)/tissue(s) were obtained.

If the study is a scientific and/or technological activity involving animals, it must be approved by an institutional ethics committee or an institutional animal ethics committee.

Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers apply their knowledge and experience as experts in the field, adhering to the principles of scientificity, objectivity, and impartiality, to review manuscripts for their originality, scientificity, completeness, feasibility, readability, future development, criticalness, and research ethics. This policy plays a crucial role in further improving the academic quality of manuscripts and leading the development direction of the discipline. Editorial Board Members’ and Peer Reviewers’ comments on a manuscript and recommendations for its acceptance, submission to other journals, or rejection are the constructive framework for the Editorial Office's decision-making on the manuscript. When Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers write an in-depth and reasoned review report for a manuscript, it also serves a crucial role in helping the authors to further revise their manuscript, regardless of whether the manuscript will be finally accepted or rejected.

Before writing a peer-review report, Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are suggested to first think about the following questions: Why did the authors perform the work? What work was done? What are the most important findings? Why did the authors use the relevant method(s)? Why were the specific parameters used? What has been done before? What makes this work different?

In addition, Editorial Board Members and Peer Reviewers are recommended to comment on the manuscript's academic quality, originality, and importance, elaborate on its shortcomings, and point out errors or ambiguous sentences in the text, pictures, tables, references, etc.

In summary, these comments should focus on the manuscript's scientific content, be in-depth and supported by reason, and be specific enough to provide the authors with important academic reference value in revising their manuscript.

If you have questions or concerns about the manuscript you are reviewing, or if you need assistance submitting the review, please write to the Help Desk (https://www.f6publishing.com/HelpDesk).

Authors may appeal an editorial decision if they feel that the decision to reject was based on either a significant misunderstanding of a core aspect of the manuscript or concerns regarding the manuscript-handling process.

If an author wishes to appeal a decision related to manuscript peer review and/or the first decision, they should contact the Editorial Office Director, Jin-Lei Wang, at j.l.wang@wjgnet.com.

If an author wishes to appeal a decision related to manuscript revision, editing, and/or the second decision, they should contact the Editorial Office Director, Jia-Ping Yan, at j.p.yan@wjgnet.com.

For either type of appeal, the author should include the manuscript ID and a clear explanation of their rationale in the email.