Peer review is the foundation of quality in research for both books and journals, ensuring that published research is rigorous and ethical. Peer reviewers can access a number of resources to assist them with their peer reviewing duties:

• How to peer review journal articles: a practical introduction to conducting peer reviews, especially for those who are new to the process
• Ethics in peer review
• Online peer review systems, and how to anonymously annotate manuscripts
• Peer review FAQs

The journal administrator is also happy to help with any queries regarding undertaking peer review assignments. Please contact the Editorial Office with any questions.

Reviewers must uphold the confidentiality of the review process, including regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI). For the avoidance of doubt, this means that neither the manuscript under review, whether whole or in part, nor the review of that manuscript should be shared with any public platform or artificial intelligence (AI) tool.

When writing a manuscript review it is important that the content, structure and recommendation are solely the product of the reviewer’s own expert knowledge, opinion and writing. Assistance from AI tools must be restricted to minimal, non-generative uses such as those enabled by integrated spelling and grammar-checking tools.

Peer review of Registered Reports

Registered Reports are a form of empirical article that involves a two-stage submission process. At the first stage, a Registered Report Protocol will be peer reviewed prior to the authors beginning their research. At the second stage, the completed Registered Report will be reviewed after the research has been completed.

When reviewing Registered Report Protocols, peer reviewers are asked to assess the proposed research question and study design along the following dimensions:

• Fit with the core themes relevant to this journal
• Importance of the research question
• Quality of the literature review
• Soundness of the proposed hypotheses
• Soundness and feasibility of the proposed study design, including statistical power
• Whether the proposed experiments offer adequate and appropriate tests of the hypotheses
• Whether proposed methods are appropriate and sufficiently detailed

When reviewing completed Registered Reports, peer reviewers are asked to assess manuscripts along the following dimensions:

• Adherence to the rationale and plan laid out in the Registered Report Protocol
• Whether conclusions are justified by the data
• The overall quality of the discussion section, and whether any claims made follow from the results

Reviewers are asked not to consider the outcome of the empirical results in their review. Completed Registered Reports will not be rejected solely because the research has obtained null results, or results that differ from any predictions in the Registered Report Protocol.