Review Criteria

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This resource establishes CorayNova Academic Press's reviewer assessment criteria for manuscripts submitted to CorayNova journals.

Review criteria must be applied in relation to the journal's aims and scope, article type, discipline, method, evidence base, reporting expectations, and approved peer review model. Reviewers should not apply a single disciplinary template to all manuscripts.

· Core Review Criteria

Criterion

Reviewer Assessment

Scope fit

Does the manuscript fit the journal's aims, scope, readership, article type, and stated editorial priorities?

Originality

Does the manuscript offer a new question, dataset, method, interpretation, synthesis, application, replication, negative result, local insight, or other contribution appropriate to its field?

Scholarly significance

Is the contribution meaningful for the intended field, community, practice area, policy context, or research conversation?

Methodological rigor

Are the design, methods, sampling, instruments, intervention, analysis, or theoretical approach appropriate and sufficiently described?

Data reliability

Are the data, sources, observations, measurements, or materials credible and consistent with the claims made?

Ethics approval and consent

Where human participants, animals, personal data, surveys, interviews, clinical material, or sensitive contexts are involved, are ethics approval, consent, and privacy protections adequately reported?

Reporting guidelines

Where applicable, does the manuscript follow relevant reporting standards for its study design, field, or article type?

Statistical or analytical soundness

Are statistical, computational, qualitative, interpretive, or analytical methods appropriate and transparently reported?

Figures and tables

Are figures and tables accurate, clear, necessary, properly labeled, and consistent with the manuscript text?

References

Are references relevant, balanced, current where appropriate, and free from unnecessary or coercive citation patterns?

Limitations

Are limitations, uncertainty, assumptions, generalizability, and alternative interpretations stated responsibly?

Language clarity

Is the manuscript sufficiently clear for review and readership, recognizing that language polishing may be appropriate where the science is understandable?

Data, code, and materials availability

Are data availability, code availability, protocol, materials, or access restrictions clearly stated where relevant?

· Assessing Different Article Types

Reviewers should calibrate assessment to the article type. Original research, reviews, methods papers, case reports, brief communications, commentaries, editorials, data papers, protocols, replications, negative results, and practice-oriented studies may require different review emphasis.

Local, regional, single-country, single-institution, and case-based studies should be assessed by their aims, methods, context, transparency, and contribution. Such studies should not be dismissed solely because they are not global in scale or because they address a specific setting.

· Data, Code, and Materials Review

Reviewers should reasonably assess data statements, code or materials availability, obvious consistency between the manuscript and supporting materials, and whether restrictions or exceptions are explained. Where feasible, reviewers may inspect supplementary materials to determine whether they support the manuscript's claims.

Reviewers are not expected to perform a full forensic audit, complete replication, or exhaustive reanalysis unless the journal has specifically requested such work and the reviewer has agreed to it.

· Ethics and Reporting Review

Area

What Reviewers Should Look For

When to Alert the Editor

Human participants

Ethics approval, consent, privacy protection, anonymization, and sensitive-data handling.

Missing or unclear ethics approval, consent, privacy safeguards, or participant protection.

Animals

Ethics approval, welfare standards, humane endpoints, and reporting of procedures.

Missing approval, welfare concerns, or inadequate reporting of animal research.

Personal data

Lawful and ethical handling of personal, sensitive, identifiable, or potentially identifiable data.

Unclear consent, re-identification risk, inappropriate sharing, or insufficient data protection.

Surveys and interviews

Recruitment, consent, participant information, confidentiality, and context-specific ethical safeguards.

Coercion risk, missing consent, vulnerable participants, or insufficient confidentiality protection.

Images and figures

Consistency, labeling, manipulation disclosure, and appropriate permissions.

Possible manipulation, duplication, misleading presentation, or missing permissions.

AI use

Disclosure of relevant AI use in research, writing, data handling, image generation, or analysis where required.

Possible undisclosed or inappropriate AI use affecting authorship, data, images, analysis, or integrity.

· Balanced Evaluation

· Distinguish between fatal problems, major revisions, minor clarifications, and optional improvements.

· Do not require unnecessary citations, experiments, datasets, theories, or framing changes unrelated to the manuscript's aims.

· Do not reject a manuscript merely because it uses a different legitimate method, theoretical tradition, or regional focus from the reviewer's own preference.

· Identify uncertainty honestly and avoid overstating concerns beyond the evidence available in the manuscript and review materials.