Reviewer Guidelines

These guidelines set out what JBCB expects of its reviewers. They follow COPE's Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

1. General Responsibilities

  • Confidentiality: Treat the manuscript and everything connected to it as confidential. Do not share, discuss or reproduce any of it without permission from the editorial office.
  • Objectivity: Review the science, not the people. Because review is double-blind, please do not try to work out who the authors are.
  • Timeliness: Keep to the agreed deadline, which supports our target of 12–14 weeks to first decision. If you cannot, tell the editorial office early.
  • Conflicts of interest: Declare any conflict before accepting, and decline where one exists. See Conflict of Interest and Financial Disclosures (Specific to Reviewers).

2. AI Tools

Do not upload any part of a manuscript to a public generative AI tool to help write your report. That would expose unpublished, confidential work to a third party. See the Generative AI (GenAI) Policy.

3. What to Assess

  • Originality: Is the work new and does it matter?
  • Methods: Are the design and statistical analysis sound and reproducible?
  • Clarity: Is the manuscript clearly written and well organised?
  • Contribution: Does it move bioinformatics and computational biology forward?
  • Ethics: Are ethical approval, informed consent and conflict-of-interest statements present and adequate?

4. Your Report

  • A short summary of what the manuscript contributes
  • Its main strengths and weaknesses
  • Numbered comments, split into major issues that must be fixed before acceptance and minor issues of wording or presentation
  • A recommendation: accept, minor revision, major revision or reject

The Reviewer Form gives a structure you can follow.

5. Ethical Concerns

  • Flag suspected plagiarism or uncited material
  • Tell us if the work seems to overlap substantially with something already published or submitted
  • Flag signs of fabricated, falsified or manipulated data or images
  • Note any detail that could identify a research participant

6. Tone

Be respectful and constructive. Criticise the work, never the authors.

7. Other Points

  • Check that supplementary material is adequate and documented
  • Consider whether each figure and table is clear and necessary
  • Confirm the references are relevant and correctly cited

8. Talking to the Editor

Raise concerns directly with the editorial office, particularly when you recommend rejection or suspect an ethical problem.

9. After the Review

Never use unpublished data, methods or ideas from a manuscript you reviewed for your own benefit, whether or not it is eventually published.