Reviewers Responsibilities

REVIEWERS' RESPONSIBILITIES POLICY

1. Contribution to Editorial Decisions and Scholarly Duty

  • 1.1. Core Academic Gatekeeping: Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication and lies at the heart of the scientific method. Referees assist the academic editor in making objective editorial decisions and, through constructive, transparent communication, help authors improve the quality and presentation of their scientific manuscripts.
  • 1.2. The Reciprocity of Reviewing: JMI shares the global consensus that all active scholars who benefit from publishing peer-reviewed research have a professional obligation to share the collective burden by performing a fair share of academic reviews.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities): Active participation in peer review by global scholars establishes a fair and inclusive international meritocracy. This ensures that manuscripts from lower-resource institutions receive the same high-quality, professional evaluation as those from elite global centers.

2. Reviewer Identity Verification & Professional Credentials

  • 2.1. Credential Authentication: To eliminate peer-review fraud and combat "paper mill" interventions, JMI requires all reviewers to undergo credential verification.
  • 2.2. Registry Requirements: Reviewers must register and maintain an active account using their institutional email address or a linked, validated ORCID iD. Editors will verify a referee’s publication history and expertise in the specific subject matter before assigning a manuscript.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions): Enforcing strict identity verification and institutional audits for peer reviewers prevents academic fraud, ensuring that JMI remains a resilient, transparent, and ethically accountable repository of management science.

3. Double-Anonymized Confidentiality and the AI Upload Ban

  • 3.1. Privileged Document Status: Any manuscript, abstract, dataset, or associated metadata received for review is a highly confidential, privileged document. It must not be shown to, discussed with, or shared with others except as explicitly authorized in writing by the handling academic editor.
  • 3.2. Absolute Generative AI Upload Ban (COPE Compliance): Reviewers are strictly prohibited from uploading submitted manuscripts or any of their components into public generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude). Utilizing these external tools to summarize, evaluate, or draft reviews violates the author's copyright, compromises proprietary research findings, and breaches the confidentiality of the peer-review process.
  • 3.3. AI Assistance Restrictions: Reviewers may only use AI tools to assist in improving the grammatical clarity of their own independently written feedback. This usage must be explicitly disclosed to the handling editor upon submission of the report.
  • 3.4. Non-Exploitation of Materials: Unpublished data, strategic frameworks, or concepts disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research or for personal, professional, or competitive advantage without the express, written consent of the authors.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure): Protecting unpublished intellectual property from automated AI data harvesting safeguards early-stage managerial and technological innovations. This encourages authors to share pioneering strategic frameworks without fear of intellectual theft.

4. Standards of Objectivity and Constructive Feedback

  • 4.1. Scientific and Procedural Merit: Reviews must be conducted with absolute, unbiased objectivity. Evaluations must focus strictly on scientific validity, theoretical contribution, methodological rigor, and relevance to the journal’s scope.
  • 4.2. Prohibition of Personal Criticism: Personal, institutional, geographical, or ideological criticism of the author is highly inappropriate and will not be tolerated.
  • 4.3. Substantiated Arguments: Referees must express their views clearly, using professional, constructive, and respectful language. All critiques and recommendations must be accompanied by supporting scholarly arguments and relevant literature citations.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth): Enforcing professional, constructive, and non-abusive feedback mechanisms protects the mental health, labor dignity, and professional well-being of academic researchers, fostering supportive and respectful global workspaces.

5. Promptness and Professional Timelines

  • 5.1. Commitment to Timelines: JMI is committed to rapid, high-quality publication. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript, or who knows that providing a prompt review will be impossible, must notify the academic editor immediately and excuse themselves from the process.
  • 5.2. Standard Turnaround Windows: To respect authors' publication goals, reviewers are expected to deliver their evaluation reports within JMI's standard turnaround windows: 7 to 14 days for original submissions and 3 days for revised manuscripts.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth): Respecting review deadlines and encouraging prompt communication protects academic labor. It prevents unnecessary, demoralizing publication delays that can stall researchers' career progression and institutional promotions.

6. Identifying Integrity Anomalies and Unacknowledged Sources

  • 6.1. Identifying Uncited Literature: Reviewers are responsible for identifying relevant published work in the management literature that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement asserting that an observation, derivation, or argument has been previously reported must be accompanied by a precise citation.
  • 6.2. Alerting Editors to Overlap: A reviewer must immediately call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity, text recycling (self-plagiarism), or partial overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
  • 6.3. Monitoring Ethical Oversights: Referees must verify that manuscripts involving human participants, surveys, or interviews document formal Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval (or adhere to the Declaration of Helsinki) and confirm that informed consent was obtained. For organizational case studies, reviewers should verify that corporate consent and GDPR-compliant data privacy measures are explicitly detailed.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production): Vigilantly identifying uncredited sources, text recycling, and ethical oversights prevents the pollution and duplication of scientific literature. This ensures that research funding, academic labor, and paper-mill resources are not wasted on redundant or ethically flawed inquiries.

7. Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest and Recusal

  • 7.1. Objective Recusal Rules: Reviewers must not consider or evaluate manuscripts in which they have actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest.
  • 7.2. Collaborative & Competitive Conflicts: Reviewers must immediately recuse themselves from the workflow if they have a relationship or connection with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the paper, including:
    • Collaborative relationships (such as co-authoring or co-managing grants with the authors within the past three years).
    • Competitive relationships (such as working on an identical, competing project).
    • Direct financial, professional, or personal connections.
  • 7.3. Quantitative Disclosure Threshold: Any financial relationship exceeding $5,000 USD per year with an entity linked to the study requires immediate recusal.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions): Establishing rigid, objective recusal standards for financial, competitive, and collaborative conflicts of interest eliminates systemic favoritism and corporate bias. This builds deep public and administrative trust in published peer-reviewed findings.

8. Anti-Citation Manipulation (Coercive References)

  • 8.1. Ethical Citation Integrity: Reviewers must not demand that authors add citations to the reviewer's own publications (or those of JMI) simply to artificially inflate citation metrics or journal impact factors.
  • 8.2. Strictly Justified Citations: Any suggestion to add references must carry a clear, independent, and documented academic justification. The suggestion must serve to improve the manuscript's theoretical framework or methodological validity.
  • SDG Alignment (SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions): Prohibiting coercive self-citations protects the integrity of automated citation indexing systems (such as Scopus and Crossref). This prevents unethical citation cartels and supports transparent institutional governance.