General Reviewer Guidelines
If you are interested in becoming a reviewer for the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, please visit the Editorial Manager ®. Click on the "Register" link to create a reviewer account and be sure to identify your areas of expertise in the "Personal Classifications" section.
General Procedures
Each manuscript is assigned to at least 2 reviewers, usually 3, one of whom is a Board of Editor's member. A classification system is used to match reviewers with manuscripts that are most likely to be of interest to them and in their area of expertise. Reviewers identify their areas of expertise (eg Personal Classifications) in their reviewer profile, under Change Details, at Editorial Manager ®. Authors can specify relevant areas of expertise when they submit a manuscript through EM for future ad hoc reviewing experience. Research Methods manuscripts are reviewed by at least 1 Editor and 1 Board of Editor member.
Reviewers are selected by the Editor and invited through e-mail to comment on the manuscript.
Reviewers who accept the invitation are given access to the blinded manuscript and return their comments through EES. Reviewers complete a short rating scale, post comments for authors, and may post confidential comments to the Editor. Confidential comments for Editors do not go to authors.
Reviewers may mentor a review; that is, have the primary review completed by a doctoral student or post doc which is subsequently evaluated and amended by the invited reviewer prior to submission to the Editor. This should be indicated on the review when submitted. Please remember that a manuscript submitted for publication is a privileged communication from the authors to the Journal. A manuscript which you are reviewing should not be the topic for a class or discussion for a group. If mentoring a review, the invited reviewer is responsible for assuring that the mentee understands this condition.
Reviewers who agree to evaluate a manuscript but do not return comments by the due date may be replaced with alternates. All reviewers replaced by alternates receive an e-mail indicating that they have been replaced on the panel to keep the review process moving along.
The Review
Our primary task is to determine the acceptability of the paper, considering its interest, quality and value to JNEB readers. To the extent possible, we are also interested in providing feedback to authors for the purpose of improving the quality of future research and publications.
As you are reviewing the manuscript, please number each comment so that authors can respond on a point-by-point basis and reviewers can easily determine, during subsequent reviews, whether each comment was adequately addressed.
Begin each comment with the page and line number(s) to which the comment refers. Comments for authors go directly to authors without editing. Please be as clear and concise as possible. Provide justification for recommendations since these comments form the basis for manuscript revision or help authors understand why the manuscript is not acceptable. Do not include comments for authors any statement concerning whether the paper should or should not be accepted. Those are reserved for the editor.
In cases where revisions are recommended, please indicate with an asterisk(*) those you consider critical to make the manuscript suitable for publication.
Reviewers need not take the time to correct grammar, punctuation, or sentence structure. If, however, there are problems with these or with general writing style, please tell the authors and recommend that they obtain editorial assistance during manuscript revision. If reviewers feel inclined to specify certain instances of grammar, punctuation or sentence structure, these should be included in a separate section from the content revisions and indicated in a section called 'Minor Comments'.
Revised manuscripts and author responses to reviewer comments are returned to those on the original panel of reviewers who agreed to review a revised manuscript. At that point, the task is to determine whether reviewer concerns are resolved through author responses and corresponding manuscript revisions. New concerns should not be raised unless they emerge from clarification in the revised manuscript. In the case where the editor is not able to secure at least two of the original reviewers, new reviewers may be invited to review at the Revise stage.
A manuscript submitted for publication is a privileged communication from the authors to the Journal.
If you accept an invitation to review a manuscript, then realize on closer inspection of the manuscript that you may have a conflict of interest, please contact the editor (managingeditor@jneb.org). We avoid inviting reviewers from the same institution or work group, but may be unaware of other potential conflicts that could exist.
Reviewer Tools
A tutorial in using EM for reviewers is available under the "Reviewer Information" heading at JNEB's EM homepage. Reviewers are encouraged to contact their manuscript's handling editor with questions or comments about the manuscript itself. Questions about submitting comments through EES may be directed to the Managing Editor. For a step-by-step reviewing process, use JNEB Reviewer Guidelines specifically for quantitative or qualitative studies. This checklist may be used for guidance during the review process, but should not be uploaded into the review submitted to the author or editor. If more information about statistical guidelines is needed, go to Guidelines for Statistical Methods for JNEB. In addition, JNEB has two webinars that are helpful for reviewers titled Good Reviewing Practices and What the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior Looks for in Qualitative Papers.
Thank you for sharing your expertise with JNEB's authors and editors. We appreciate your contribution to the Journal and to the field. We also welcome your comments on our review process, which may be sent to managingeditor@jneb.org or editor@jneb.org.
