Instruction for Reviewers

Instruction for Reviewer

Sulaimani Dental Journal (Sulaimani Dent. J.) is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed scientific dental journal dedicated to the dissemination of new knowledge and information on all sciences relevant to dentistry. As you are an expertise in your field, we are inviting you to review one of our articles. We greatly appreciate your cooperation to support our journal by your professional reviewing. Your constructive comments and report will help the editor to take a decision on the selected manuscript.

If you kindly accept the invitation, please return your report within 2 weeks.

Please provide your comments and recommendations to the editors about the manuscript regarding quality of the work, evaluate the relevance and originality of the manuscript, data accuracy, and ethical concerns. By providing your professional comments, you are going to help authors improve their paper to reach the standards of Sulaimani Dent. J. and be ready for publication. You could help Sulaimani Dent. J. editorial board to either accept for more reviewing or reject the submitted manuscript. It is important to alert the journal editors regarding the ethical concerns or potential inadequacies in the disclosure of authors’ competing interests.

You should respect confidentiality and do not disclose the information until the manuscript is published. Please do not discuss the manuscript with anyone out of the Editorial Office unless taken permission from the editor-in-chief. 

You should protect individual data. You should not use the information for your own benefit or share with any other individual or organization. 

Sulaimani Dent. J. encourage reviewers to point out relevant published work which is not yet cited. If you have questions to the authors, or need more clarifications regarding the manuscript, please do not make direct contact with the authors. You can state your questions and comments to the Editorial Board Office to handle the case. Please delete the soft copies and crush the hard copies of the reviewed manuscript, because the reviewed manuscript is the journal’s asset. Reviews should be based on relevancy, integrity, scientific strength, potential interest, completeness, clarity, and ethics in the manuscript. You should declare if you are involved in the submitted work or if you have any concerns in the study in any manner and decline to review the manuscript. You are allowed to review the manuscript although you may have reviewed this manuscript in another journal. Refer to the Instructions for Authors to check if the paper meets the submission criteria of the journal (e.g. length, scope, and presentation). Plagiarism: If you suspect that an article is a substantial copy of another work, please let the editor know, citing the previous work in as much detail as possible. 

General Reviewing Guidelines

• You should respect confidentiality and do not disclose the information until the manuscript is published. Please do not discuss the manuscript with anyone out of the Editorial Office unless taken permission from the editor-in-chief.

• You should protect individual data. You should not use the information for your own benefit or share with any other individual or organization.

• Sulaimani Dent. J. encourage reviewers to point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.

• If you have questions to the authors, or need more clarifications regarding the manuscript, please do not make direct contact with the authors. You can state your questions and comments to the Editorial Board Office to handle the case.

• Please delete the soft copies and crush the hard copies of the reviewed manuscript, because the reviewed manuscript is the journal’s asset.

• Reviews should be based on relevancy, integrity, scientific strength, potential interest, completeness, clarity, and ethics in the manuscript.

• You should declare if you are involved in the submitted work or if you have any concerns in the study in any manner and decline to review the manuscript.

• You are allowed to review the manuscript although you may have reviewed this manuscript in another journal.

• Refer to the Instructions for Authors to check if the paper meets the submission criteria of the journal (e.g. length, scope, and presentation).

• Plagiarism: If you suspect that an article is a substantial copy of another work, please let the editor know, citing the previous work in as much detail as possible.

Deadlines

Please complete the “Reviewer’s Comments” form by the due date to the receiving editorial office.  Please contact the Editorial Board members in case you could not finish reviewing at the proposed  time.

The Review

Please organize your review into: Comments for Authors and Confidential Comments to the  Editor.

Comments to Authors

Comments to the authors should include an introductory section discussing:

• The worth and importance of the paper to Sulaimani Dent. J. readers; 

• Significance of the research study to the field;

• The uniqueness, originality, and reliability of the methods and analysis;

• Whether the conclusions are drawn are justified by the data that is presented; the conclusions that are given should reflect the data in the results.

• Major positive and negative aspects of the manuscript, including major deficiencies or irreparable defects;

• It is better to write your assessment opinion regarding the manuscript briefly. This will help the editors to either accept or reject the manuscript.

• For the purpose of confidentiality, it is better to write down your comments and suggestions on another word document file, not on the manuscript file that has been sent to you.

The manuscript document in your computer could be displayed differently than how actually presented in journal computer, we recommend our reviewers to use numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) when you want to write comments on each word, line or paragraph. This will help the authors to find the area that requires changes or modifications.

As you read the manuscript, consider the following issues and make comments in your review as follow:

General overview: Is the manuscript clear and well organized. Does it require to add more information or delete some unnecessary sentences or paragraphs.

Title: Does it clearly describe the article?

Abstract: Has the abstract been summarized in a way that reflects the content of the research paper?

Introduction: Does it describe what the author hoped to achieve accurately, and clearly state the problem being investigated? Normally, the introduction should summarize relevant research to provide context, and explain what other authors' findings, if any, are being challenged or extended. It should describe the experiment, the hypothesis(es) and the general experimental design or method.

Methods and statistical design: Does the methods go with the purposes of the study? Is the study design up-to-date? Are the methods as clear as other researchers can reproduce the procedures? Have the equipment and materials been adequately described? Are the study population sufficient? has the author been precise in describing measurements? Are the statistical data explained thoroughly?

Results and data: It should be clearly laid out and in a logical sequence. are they clearly representing the statistical data? Are statistical data in the text and tables/figures closely related. Are tables/figures presented very relevant? Are there any texts repetition?

Conclusion/ Discussion: Are the claims in this section supported by the results, do they seem reasonable? Have the authors indicated how the results relate to expectations and to earlier research? Does the article support or contradict previous theories? Does the conclusion explain how the research has moved the body of scientific knowledge forward?

Tables, Figures, Images: Are they appropriate? Do they properly show the data? Are they easy to interpret and understand?

Citations: Are the mentioned references are related to the subject and up-to-date?

Comments should be carefully constructed so that the author fully understands what actions they need to take to improve their paper. Also, Do not write neither acceptance nor rejection to in the manuscript to the authors. You may ask for correction and further improvement.

Confidential Comments to the Editors

The comments written to the authors should not be duplicated or repeated to the editors instead of that make a recommendation and give advices to the editors regarding acceptance and further revisions or rejection. If you have found any issues regarding a breach of publication or scientific ethics, or the authors have unable to reveal competing interests, please provide information in this section.

The specific decision is either

Accept – if the paper is suitable for publication in its current form.

Minor revision – if the paper will be ready for publication after light revisions. Please list the revisions you would recommend the author makes.

Major revision – if the paper would benefit from substantial changes such as expanded data analysis, widening of the literature review, or rewriting sections of the text.

Reject – if the paper is not suitable for publication with this journal or if the revisions that would need to be undertaken are too fundamental for the submission to continue being considered in its current form.

Example of reviewer comment of one papers submitted to the journal, this is to help the reviewer to organize the comments the same way presented below:

Dear Sulaimani Dent. J., 

Thanks for sending the paper, I found the study is good enough to be accepted with major corrections. My suggestions and comments are shown below and I would like to see the amendments before acceptance.

Comments for paper 208  

The current study could have been designed better as follow:  

1. The 4th and 5th year student were better for that kind of question as they already know the  importance of anatomy subject.

2. Correlating the drawing ability of students to their learning outcome (exam result for  example) and their memory of subjects. 

3. What about lecturers’ perception for drawing? I think it is important as well.  

The manuscript requires some revisions as follows:  

1. The title better to be changed to “Students’ perception of drawing as a learning aid for the  human anatomy (Students’ Based Evaluation)” 

2. Acknowledgment: Maxillofacial Surgery and Anatomy Departments helped the author,  However, the author forgets to acknowledge them.

3. In Abstract  

• The introduction has to be changed to objectives.  

• Authors believe has to be removed to better word.  

• Name of university and academic year not necessary in abstract.  

• More info need to be given on questions of questioner.  

• The sentence “Drawings can be implemented as practical tool in human anatomy curriculum for undergraduate dental education” is more ambitious conclusion and from your data you cannot suggest that. Further studies need to be done to conclude that.

4. Key words better to be: Students’ perception, drawing, anatomy subject.

5. In introduction  

• Sentence 2 in paragraph 2: H in Human has to be in lower case “human”.  

• Sentence 3 in paragraph 2: Millikan is wrong, correct it to manikin. 

• Sentence 1 in paragraph 3: Reference need to be added after “their imaginary memory for  human anatomy”.  

• The Author has to talk more on the importance of student perception in modern education  and give examples as support for the study and from here justify the hypothesis of drawing  as learning aid and the aim of the study.   

• Aim of the study is part of introduction and subheading is not necessary. 

6. In Materials and Method  

• The questioner has to be added as table here and cite it at the end of first paragraph.  

• Last sentence of paragraph 2 is not clear, did the author tested the drawing capability of student and correlate them to their learning outcome? Or what you mean here?  

• I struggle to know how the questioner translated to data? What kind of data were they? qualitative (binary or ordinal) ? or quantitative (continuous) ? adding the table of questioner will be better and clarify what is the response to each question.  

• Not quiet sure about the use of spearman correlation for your data? It is used with continuous non parametric data. 

7. In Result  

• The author put to the basic data in figures, which are things that can be written in result as  text.  

• Furthermore, the data presentations in figures and text are not in same way. For example:  the data in figure 1 are as percentage whereas in text are as number. These have to be  consistent in both figures and text.  

• Figure 4 and all correlations test have to be shown in table preferably and state what kind  of correlation test used. 

8. In Discussion  

• First paragraph need to be added to introduction section if it is not repetitive.  

• In paragraph 7, sentence “students in the first year might not have a full appreciation of  anatomy” this can be a limitation of the study and from that the author can suggest doing  this research in 4th and 5th year student.  

• In paragraph 7, sentence “especially when it is not given in their mother spoken language”  is not a strong argument as all their subjects were not given in mother language. 

9. Conclusion  

• It has to be paraphrased, as it is repletion of conclusion of abstract.  

• 2nd sentence has to be removed as it is not the aim of the study and your data do not support that.  

• The author has to state the possible clinical implication of the study and suggestions for further study. 

10. I suggest the paper to be send for proofreading as the language is not very good.