Guidelines for Preparing a Scientific Review

A scientific review is a written expert assessment in which the reviewer analyzes the content and form of a scholarly work, identifies its strengths and weaknesses, and provides well-reasoned recommendations for improving the manuscript.

Purpose of the Scientific Review

The purpose of peer review is to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript’s scientific quality, relevance, originality, methodological soundness, structure, argumentation, and compliance with the journal’s requirements.

Preparing a high-quality review requires careful reading of the manuscript, consideration of its content within the relevant research field, and the formulation of constructive, evidence-based recommendations for the authors.

What Does Scientific Criticism Mean?

In scholarly practice, critical assessment does not mean criticism of the author in a negative manner. Rather, it means an objective and impartial analysis of the manuscript, including the logic of presentation, validity of arguments, appropriateness of methods, and reliability of conclusions.

The reviewer should examine the manuscript from different scholarly perspectives and, where necessary, refer to relevant articles, monographs, reports, and other sources, as well as current theoretical approaches in the field.

Characterization and Assessment of a Scholarly Work

The reviewer assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript, its structure, relevance to a specific research field, quality of argumentation, authorial competence, and correspondence between the stated aim and the presented results.

Reviewing a scholarly work requires understanding not only the content of the text but also its purpose, intended audience, structure, and manner of presenting the research findings.

Manuscript Analysis

Analysis involves examining the content and conceptual framework of the manuscript by identifying its key components and determining how they are interconnected and how they influence the overall argument.

A high-quality analysis should provide a balanced assessment of the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses, scientific value, methodological basis, evidence, and practical relevance.

Review Structure

A concise or extended review usually includes the following components:

• introduction;
• summary of the research problem and the author’s aim;
• critical analysis of the manuscript;
• conclusion;
• references to sources used by the reviewer, if applicable.

Introduction

In the introduction, the reviewer briefly identifies the author(s), the topic of the manuscript, its aim, key arguments, or principal findings. At the end of the introduction, the reviewer may provide an overall assessment of the manuscript: positive, negative, or mixed.

Summary of the Research Problem and the Author’s Aim

This section should briefly describe the research problem, the author’s aim, the structure of the manuscript, and its key arguments. The summary should be concise and should not replace critical analysis.

Critical Analysis of the Manuscript

Critical analysis should provide a comprehensive and balanced assessment of the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses, scientific novelty, methodology, argumentation, source base, and practical relevance.

The reviewer may use the journal’s template but should independently determine the logic of presenting conclusions: from the most important to the less important, from positive to critical comments, or according to specific evaluation criteria.

Conclusion

The conclusion should be concise. The reviewer summarizes the overall assessment of the manuscript, presents the main recommendations, and, where necessary, clarifies the reasoning behind the evaluation in order to make the review more substantiated and convincing.

References Used by the Reviewer

If the reviewer used any sources when preparing the review, they should be listed at the end of the review in accordance with the journal’s requirements.

Key Criteria for Evaluating a Manuscript

• Scientific significance and contribution: the aim of the study, the extent to which it has been achieved, and the contribution to theory, data, or practice.
• Methodology and assumptions: appropriateness of methods, validity of assumptions, reliability and robustness of results.
• Argumentation and evidence: clarity of the research problem or hypothesis, quality of evidence, and logical consistency of conclusions.
• Writing style and text structure: suitability of the writing style for the intended audience, logical organization, and linguistic quality.
• References: compliance of citations and references with APA Citation Style requirements.