Reviewer Guidelines

Accept a review only if you have suitable expertise, can meet the agreed deadline and have no conflict that could compromise an impartial assessment. Tell the editor about relevant collaborations, institutional relationships, competing research or financial interests. If you recognise an author in an anonymous manuscript, disclose that privately.

What to assess

• Fit with the journal and a clearly stated research question or purpose.
• Original contribution and appropriate engagement with existing scholarship.
• Research design, sampling, evidence, analysis and reproducibility where relevant.
• Whether conclusions follow from the evidence and limitations are acknowledged.
• Consent, ethics approval where applicable, participant protection and responsible data reporting.
• Clarity, structure, tables, figures, references and accessibility to the intended readership.

Separate essential changes from suggestions. Give specific, constructive reasons and identify relevant passages. Do not request citations merely to increase your own citation counts. Distinguish scientific weaknesses from language issues. Include a recommendation and confidential notes to the editor where needed; concerns about misconduct should be reported privately with evidence.

Confidentiality

Do not share the manuscript, contact its authors, use unpublished material for your own work or delegate the review without editorial permission. Do not upload manuscript text, data or your report to external generative AI services. Your assessment and report must remain your own responsibility. Delete working copies when the assignment ends, subject to any applicable record-retention obligations.

Inform the editor promptly if the deadline cannot be met. Remain available to clarify your report or assess a revision where agreed. The editorial decision may differ from your recommendation.

Language, communities, education and public life

Assess whether language is central to the question and whether interpretations are supported by linguistic and social evidence. Check translations, glosses, transcription conventions, corpus documentation and the handling of speaker or community rights as relevant. For data and documentation papers, verify that the promised dataset is openly deposited, usable and documented. Where data cannot be shared because of legitimate restrictions, advise the editor on suitability for a research, short report or methods section instead.