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Selecting, Inviting and Managing Reviewers is one of the most important editorial responsibilities in peer review. Editors should seek reviewers who have relevant expertise, sufficient independence, appropriate availability, and the ability to provide a fair, constructive, confidential, and timely assessment.

This page provides publisher-level guidance. Each journal should state its peer review model, reviewer expectations, and any article-type-specific reviewer requirements on the CorayNova Journals Platform.

· Selection Principles

· Select reviewers for expertise, independence, judgment, and relevance to the manuscript's subject, method, evidence, or article type.

· Avoid reviewers with known financial, personal, institutional, competitive, supervisory, collaborative, or other conflicts of interest.

· Consider diversity of expertise, geography, institution, career stage, and methodological perspective where practical and relevant.

· Avoid over-reliance on a narrow pool of reviewers or repeated use of the same reviewers where broader expertise is available.

· Protect confidentiality and do not disclose reviewer identities unless the journal's peer review model explicitly allows it.

· Do not invite reviewers in a way that pressures them to recommend acceptance, rejection, citation of specific work, or a particular editorial outcome.

· Do not request, encourage, or permit coercive citation or forced citation as a condition of favorable review or editorial consideration.

· Reviewer Number and Review Model Expectations

CorayNova does not set a single publisher-level minimum reviewer number for every manuscript or article type. Each journal must publicly state its reviewer number or reviewer expectations and its peer review model on the CorayNova Journals Platform.

As a publisher-level best-practice expectation, CorayNova encourages research articles to be evaluated by no fewer than two peer reviewers where external peer review applies and where the journal's discipline and article type support this approach. Other article types, such as editorials, commentaries, book reviews, corrections, invited materials, or non-research content, may follow different journal-approved review routes.

Journal peer review models may include single-anonymous review, double-anonymous review, open review, or another approved model. The model should be explained clearly by the journal and applied consistently.

· Reviewer Selection Matrix

Criterion	What to Consider	Editorial Caution
Subject expertise	Does the reviewer understand the manuscript's field, methods, theory, evidence, population, region, or article type?	Avoid selecting reviewers based only on seniority or availability when expertise is weak.
Methodological expertise	Does the manuscript require statistical, qualitative, laboratory, clinical, legal, humanities, computational, or other specialized method review?	Use more than one reviewer or specialist input when one reviewer cannot cover all major dimensions.
Independence	Does the reviewer have recent collaboration, same institution, close personal relationship, rivalry, financial interest, supervisory relationship, or other conflict?	When in doubt, choose another reviewer or ask for disclosure before sharing the manuscript.
Availability	Can the reviewer complete the review in the expected timeframe for the journal?	Do not sacrifice independence or expertise merely to obtain a fast review.
Confidentiality	Can the reviewer handle unpublished material confidentially and avoid unauthorized sharing, including with colleagues or AI tools?	Remind reviewers that sharing the manuscript requires editorial permission.
Review quality history	Has the reviewer previously provided fair, constructive, respectful, and useful reviews?	Avoid reviewers with a pattern of poor-quality, biased, hostile, coercive, or delayed reviews.
Author suggestions	Are author-suggested reviewers suitable and independent?	Author suggestions may be considered but should not replace editorial judgment.

 

· Author-Suggested and Excluded Reviewers

Some journals may allow authors to suggest reviewers or identify individuals who should not review the manuscript. Editors may consider this information, but they remain responsible for reviewer selection.

Suggested reviewers should be checked for independence, expertise, accurate contact information, institutional affiliation, publication record, and any signs of manipulation. Exclusion requests should be considered when they identify plausible conflicts, but they should not be used to prevent legitimate critical review.

Author-suggested reviewers may be considered only where the journal allows this practice. They are suggestions, not appointments, and editors must independently assess expertise, independence, authenticity, and conflicts of interest. Authors may also identify reviewers they believe should be excluded and explain the reason; the final decision remains with the editor.

· Reviewer Invitations

Reviewer invitations should clearly identify the manuscript title or subject area, article type, journal, expected review timeframe where applicable, confidentiality expectations, competing interest disclosure requirements, and how to accept or decline the invitation.

Reviewers should be encouraged to decline if they lack expertise, have insufficient time, have a conflict of interest, or cannot review the work confidentially and respectfully.