Reviewer Guidelines

The Journal of Business and Cultural Studies follows a single-anonymous (single-blind) peer-review process, in which the identity of the reviewer remains confidential while the authors' identities are known to the reviewer.
Peer reviewers play an essential role in maintaining the scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical standards, and integrity of the journal's published record.
Reviewers are expected to provide independent, objective, constructive, and evidence-based assessments of submitted manuscripts.

Editorial Assessment and Final Editorial Decision

All submitted manuscripts undergo an initial editorial assessment before peer review.
The editorial assessment considers, as applicable:
relevance to the journal's aims and scope;
scientific or clinical significance;
originality;
methodological suitability;
technical completeness;
ethical requirements; and
overall suitability for peer review.
Manuscripts considered suitable for peer review are assigned to reviewers with appropriate subject expertise.
Reviewers provide independent scholarly assessments and recommendations. Reviewer recommendations are advisory and do not constitute the final publication decision.
The Editor-in-Chief has overall responsibility for editorial decisions and the academic and publication integrity of the journal.
The Editor-in-Chief may delegate the handling and editorial decision-making of individual manuscripts to a Senior Editor, Associate Editor, or another formally designated editor with appropriate subject expertise.
The Editor-in-Chief or a formally designated editor may decide to:
accept the manuscript;
request minor revision;
request major revision; or
reject the manuscript
after considering the manuscript, editorial assessment, reviewer reports, ethical considerations, and other relevant information.
A Senior Editor or other formally designated editor may make the final editorial decision for manuscripts assigned to them under authority delegated by the Editor-in-Chief.
Reviewers do not make editorial decisions on behalf of the journal.

Reviewer Qualifications and Expertise

Reviewers should accept assignments only when they have appropriate subject expertise, methodological knowledge, or relevant professional experience to evaluate the manuscript.
For medical and health-science manuscripts, reviewers should consider whether their expertise is appropriate to the subject, such as:
clinical medicine;
public health;
epidemiology;
nursing and allied health sciences;
biomedical sciences;
medical laboratory sciences;
pharmacology;
diagnostic sciences;
healthcare research;
clinical research methodology;
biostatistics; or
another relevant specialty.
Reviewers should decline an assignment when they do not have sufficient expertise to provide a reliable assessment.

Conflict of Interest

Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest before accepting or completing a review.
Conflicts may include:
financial relationships;
current or recent institutional relationships;
close personal relationships;
recent or ongoing collaboration with an author;
supervisory or academic relationships;
competitive relationships;
involvement in closely related work that may affect impartiality; or
any other circumstance that could reasonably influence the review.
Reviewers should decline the assignment when a conflict could compromise, or reasonably appear to compromise, their impartiality.

Confidentiality

All manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents.
Reviewers must not:
share the manuscript with others without authorization;
disclose the identity of the authors;
disclose their reviewer identity to the authors unless expressly authorized;
discuss the manuscript or its contents outside the review process;
reproduce or distribute manuscript content;
use unpublished information for personal, professional, academic, or commercial advantage; or
retain or use confidential manuscript materials after completing the review.
The manuscript and all associated information remain confidential throughout the review and editorial process.

General Principles of Review

Reviewers should provide an objective, balanced, constructive, and evidence-based assessment.
Reviews should focus on the manuscript and its scientific or scholarly content rather than on the authors personally.
Reviewers should:
identify important strengths and weaknesses;
distinguish major concerns from minor corrections;
provide specific and actionable comments;
support substantive criticisms with appropriate reasoning or evidence;
avoid unnecessary or hostile language;
avoid personal criticism of authors; and
indicate where additional clarification, analysis, references, or methodological information is needed.

Evaluation Criteria

Reviewers should evaluate the manuscript, where applicable, according to the following criteria.

Relevance and Scope

Is the manuscript relevant to the aims and scope of the journal?
Is the topic appropriate for the journal's readership?
Does the manuscript address a relevant medical, clinical, health-science, biomedical, or public-health issue?

Originality and Significance

Does the manuscript provide an original or meaningful contribution?
Is the research question or objective clearly defined?
Does the work provide useful scientific, clinical, methodological, or public-health information?
Are the conclusions sufficiently supported to justify the claimed contribution?

Scientific and Methodological Rigor

Reviewers should assess whether:
the study design is appropriate for the research question;
the methodology is adequately described;
participant selection is appropriate;
inclusion and exclusion criteria are sufficiently clear where applicable;
sample size and sampling methods are appropriate where applicable;
control or comparison groups are appropriate where applicable;
outcome measures are clearly defined;
laboratory or clinical procedures are adequately described;
statistical methods are appropriate;
potential sources of bias are considered;
limitations are appropriately discussed; and
the analysis is sufficiently rigorous to support the conclusions.

Results

Reviewers should assess whether:
the results are presented clearly;
the results correspond to the stated objectives;
tables and figures accurately represent the findings;
statistical results are appropriately reported;
important findings are not omitted;
unsupported claims are avoided; and
the results are distinguished from interpretation or speculation.

Discussion and Interpretation

Reviewers should assess whether the discussion:
appropriately interprets the findings;
relates the findings to relevant previous research;
identifies similarities and differences with existing evidence;
avoids unsupported causal claims;
acknowledges important limitations; and
does not extend conclusions beyond the evidence presented.

Clinical and Scientific Relevance

For clinically relevant manuscripts, reviewers should consider whether the findings have an appropriate level of clinical, diagnostic, therapeutic, epidemiological, or public-health relevance.
Reviewers should distinguish between:
statistically significant findings;
clinically meaningful findings; and
exploratory or hypothesis-generating observations.
Claims regarding clinical application should be supported by the evidence presented.

Ethical Compliance

For research involving human participants, reviewers should assess whether the manuscript provides appropriate information concerning:
ethics committee or institutional review board approval;
approval or reference number, where applicable;
informed consent;
participant confidentiality;
privacy and protection of personal information; and
other relevant ethical requirements.
Where formal ethical approval was not required, the manuscript should provide an appropriate explanation where relevant.
For animal research, reviewers should consider whether appropriate ethical approval and animal welfare information are provided.
Ethical concerns should be reported confidentially to the editor where appropriate.

Informed Consent and Patient Confidentiality

For case reports, case series, clinical studies, photographs, interviews, or manuscripts containing potentially identifiable patient information, reviewers should consider whether appropriate consent and privacy safeguards are addressed.
Reviewers should not request unnecessary identifying information about patients.
If a manuscript appears to contain potentially identifiable patient information without appropriate justification or consent, reviewers should raise the concern with the editor.

Clinical Trials and Registration

For clinical trials, reviewers should consider, where applicable:
whether the study design is appropriate;
whether trial registration information is provided;
whether the registered study and submitted manuscript appear consistent;
whether the primary and secondary outcomes are clearly described;
whether participant allocation and study procedures are adequately reported; and
whether conclusions are supported by the reported results.
Reviewers should not require changes merely to conform to personal preferences where the study has been appropriately designed and reported.

Reporting Guidelines

Where applicable, reviewers should refer to recognized reporting standards appropriate to the study design.
These may include:
CONSORT – Randomized Controlled Trials
STROBE – Observational Studies
PRISMA – Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
CARE – Case Reports
STARD – Diagnostic Accuracy Studies
ARRIVE – Animal Research
EQUATOR Network
Reviewers should consider whether the manuscript provides sufficient information for readers to understand, evaluate, and potentially reproduce the reported research where appropriate.
The absence of a reporting checklist should be considered in the context of the study type and the journal's requirements.

Statistical and Data Analysis

Where statistical analysis is used, reviewers should consider:
appropriateness of the statistical methods;
adequacy of the study design for the analysis;
sample size and statistical power where relevant;
handling of missing data;
selection of statistical tests;
reporting of effect estimates and uncertainty where appropriate;
consistency between statistical results and conclusions; and
whether statistical claims are adequately supported.
Reviewers should distinguish methodological concerns that materially affect the validity of the findings from minor statistical presentation issues.
Where specialized statistical expertise is required, the editor may seek an additional statistical review.

Data Availability and Research Transparency

Where applicable, reviewers should consider whether the manuscript provides sufficient information concerning:
data sources;
study materials;
analytical procedures;
datasets;
software or computational methods; and
data availability.
Reviewers should not request disclosure of confidential, proprietary, or personally identifiable information where such disclosure would be inappropriate or unethical.

Figures, Tables, and Images

Reviewers should assess whether:
figures and tables are necessary and relevant;
data are presented consistently;
figures and tables are adequately labeled;
results are not unnecessarily duplicated between text and tables or figures;
clinical or scientific images are of sufficient quality;
image manipulation does not appear to misrepresent the underlying information; and
patient-identifying information is appropriately protected.
Any suspected inappropriate image manipulation should be reported to the editor.

References

Reviewers should assess whether:
relevant literature has been considered;
important primary research is appropriately cited;
references support the claims for which they are cited;
citations are sufficiently current where appropriate;
excessive or unnecessary citation is avoided; and
references appear accurate.
Reviewers should not request citation of their own publications unless there is a clear and legitimate scholarly reason.
Reviewers should not recommend citations merely to increase citation counts or for personal academic benefit.

Plagiarism, Duplicate Publication, and Research Misconduct

Reviewers should alert the editor if they identify or suspect:
plagiarism;
substantial text reuse;
duplicate or redundant publication;
fabrication;
falsification;
inappropriate image manipulation;
manipulated or unreliable data;
inappropriate authorship;
undisclosed conflicts of interest;
ethical approval concerns;
manipulated peer review; or
other research or publication misconduct.
Reviewers should not independently contact the authors to investigate suspected misconduct.
Concerns should be communicated confidentially to the editor with supporting information where possible.
A similarity report or apparent textual overlap should be treated as an indication requiring editorial assessment rather than automatically as proof of misconduct.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Reviewers should not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished manuscript content to publicly accessible generative AI systems or other external tools unless expressly authorized by the journal and appropriate confidentiality safeguards are in place.
Reviewers remain responsible for maintaining manuscript confidentiality.
AI-assisted tools should not replace the reviewer's independent scholarly judgment.
If a reviewer uses an authorized AI-assisted tool in the review process, the reviewer should comply with the journal's confidentiality and disclosure requirements.

Reviewer Comments to Authors

Comments to authors should be:
professional;
specific;
constructive;
evidence-based;
understandable; and
focused on improving the scientific quality of the manuscript.
Reviewers should identify major concerns clearly and explain why they affect the manuscript.
Where possible, reviewers should distinguish:

Major Comments

Issues that materially affect the scientific validity, interpretation, ethics, reproducibility, or publication suitability of the manuscript.

Minor Comments

Issues involving clarity, terminology, presentation, references, formatting, or other matters that do not fundamentally affect the scientific validity of the work.

Confidential Comments to the Editor

Reviewers may provide confidential comments to the editor regarding matters that should not be disclosed to the authors.
These may include:
ethical concerns;
suspected research misconduct;
conflicts of interest;
concerns regarding data reliability;
suspected duplicate publication;
concerns regarding inappropriate image manipulation;
concerns regarding peer-review integrity; or
other information relevant to editorial decision-making.
Confidential comments should be factual and professional.

Review Recommendation

Reviewers may provide one of the following recommendations:
Accept
Minor Revision
Major Revision
Reject
The recommendation is advisory and does not constitute the final editorial decision.
The reviewer should ensure that the recommendation is consistent with the substantive comments provided in the review.
A recommendation to reject should be supported by clear scholarly, methodological, ethical, or editorial reasons.

Review Report Structure

A review report should preferably include:

General Assessment

A brief assessment of:
the purpose of the manuscript;
its scientific or clinical significance;
its main strengths;
its principal limitations; and
its overall suitability for the journal.

Major Comments

Detailed comments addressing issues that materially affect the manuscript, including where applicable:
research question;
study design;
methodology;
ethics;
statistical analysis;
results;
interpretation;
clinical relevance;
reporting completeness; and
conclusions.

Minor Comments

Specific suggestions regarding:
clarity;
terminology;
organization;
references;
tables;
figures;
grammar; and
other presentation issues.

Confidential Comments to the Editor

Any confidential concerns relevant to editorial decision-making.

Timeliness

Reviewers should normally complete their review within 2–3 weeks, unless another timeframe is agreed with the editorial office.
If additional time is required, reviewers should inform the editorial office promptly.
Reviewers who are unable to complete a review within the requested timeframe should decline the invitation where possible so that the editorial process is not unnecessarily delayed.

Reviewer Recognition

The journal may recognize reviewer contributions through appropriate reviewer-record or acknowledgment mechanisms where available and where disclosure is consistent with confidentiality requirements.
Reviewer identities remain confidential in accordance with the journal's single-anonymous peer-review policy.

Editorial Independence

Reviewers must not allow commercial interests, personal relationships, institutional interests, competition, or other external pressures to influence their assessment.
Peer review should be based on the scientific and scholarly merits of the manuscript.

Final Responsibility

Peer reviewers provide expert assessments and recommendations, but the final editorial decision remains the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief or a formally designated editor acting under authority delegated by the Editor-in-Chief.
Reviewers should therefore provide their assessment independently and objectively without attempting to direct the editorial process beyond their scholarly evaluation of the manuscript.