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This resource establishes CorayNova Academic Press's standards for reviewer reports.

A high-quality review report is clear, specific, evidence-based, proportionate, respectful, and useful to both editors and authors. It explains the basis for the reviewer's assessment and distinguishes essential concerns from optional improvements.

· Core Principle

Reviewers must focus on the manuscript's scholarly content, reporting, evidence, ethics, and fit with the journal. Comments should help editors make a responsible decision and help authors understand what should be clarified, corrected, strengthened, or reconsidered.

Reviewer reports must not contain insults, discriminatory language, hostile language, sarcasm about author ability, nationality or language-background bias, or personal comments unrelated to scholarly evaluation.

· Recommended Report Structure

Report Element	Purpose	Good Practice
Brief summary	Shows that the reviewer has understood the manuscript.	Summarize the research question, approach, and main claim in one concise paragraph without copying the abstract.
Overall assessment	Frames the review for editors and authors.	State the main strengths and the most important concerns before detailed comments.
Major issues	Identifies points that materially affect validity, interpretation, ethics, or suitability.	Prioritize issues involving scope, methods, data, analysis, reporting, ethics approval, consent, conclusions, or unsupported claims.
Minor issues	Identifies smaller corrections or improvements.	List matters such as clarity, missing details, figure labels, reference gaps, terminology, or limited language issues.
Ethical or integrity concerns	Alerts the editor to issues requiring confidential handling.	Describe concerns carefully and privately; avoid unsupported accusations in comments to authors.
Recommendation	Helps the editor understand the reviewer's view.	Choose the recommendation that best matches the substance of the comments and explain the reason.

 

· Writing for Authors

· Be specific: identify the section, figure, table, method, claim, or reference that needs attention.

· Be constructive: explain why a change is needed and, where appropriate, what kind of clarification would resolve the concern.

· Be proportionate: do not require unnecessary new experiments, analyses, citations, or framing changes that exceed the manuscript's scope.

· Be fair: assess local, regional, single-country, single-institution, or case-based studies by their aims, methods, context, evidence, and contribution rather than dismissing them because of scale alone.

· Be respectful: critique the work, not the authors.

· Confidential Comments to the Editor

CorayNova allows confidential comments to the editor. These comments should be used for matters that are not suitable for direct author comments, such as suspected plagiarism, data or image concerns, undisclosed competing interests, authorship anomalies, research ethics concerns, safety issues, confidentiality matters, reviewer identity concerns, or other issues requiring editorial handling.

Confidential comments should not contradict the main assessment given to authors unless the difference is necessary because of ethics, integrity, safety, confidentiality, or competing-interest concerns.

· Tone and Content Standards

Do	Do Not
Explain the reason for major concerns.	Use vague statements such as 'this is poor' without explaining the scholarly basis.
Use professional, neutral, and respectful language.	Use insulting, discriminatory, sarcastic, hostile, or personal language.
Separate essential revisions from optional suggestions.	Turn preferences into mandatory requirements without justification.
Recommend citations only when they are directly relevant and explain why.	Engage in coercive citation or request irrelevant citations to the reviewer, friends, institution, journal, or preferred network.
Flag ethical concerns privately to the editor.	Contact authors, institutions, funders, media, or third parties about the manuscript.

 

· AI and Language Support

Reviewers remain fully responsible for the substance, tone, accuracy, confidentiality, and integrity of their review reports. If AI tools are used in the review process, the reviewer must disclose this to the editor, and the use must be recorded in the review record.

Public AI tools and external systems must not receive unpublished manuscript content, data, figures, supplementary materials, review reports, or editorial correspondence.