Guidelines for Reviewers

ABS aims to provide a service to authors and the wider research community by making as much research available as possible, provided it meets our journal’s high standards for research conduct and ethical procedures and receives approval after peer review. This guidelines for reviewers are made based on the Committee on Publication Ethics Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers and Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, which also provide further information on how to be objective and constructive in your review.

1. Peer Review Mode

ABS uses double-blind peer review, which means:

  • the reviewer’s name is NOT disclosed to the author
  • the author’s name is NOT disclosed to the reviewer

2. Transparent Peer Review

With a commitment to openness and accountability, and to increase the level of transparency throughout our peer review process, our editorial office has decided to fully implement the transparent peer review (TPR) process for all new submission from March 15, 2023.

For more detailed information, please refer to: https://abs.amegroups.org/announcement/view/131.

3. The role of reviewers

If we require your expertise to evaluate a manuscript, we will send you an invitation by email. You can then accept or decline this invitation through our online submission system. By agreeing to review, you provide an essential service to the journal and the scientific community, helping to ensure that all published research is methodologically rigorous, scientifically sound, ethically conducted, and reported in line with relevant guidelines (e.g., the CARE guidelines for case reports).

Reviewers are expected to evaluate manuscripts in a timely, transparent, and ethical manner, in accordance with the COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers).

We greatly appreciate the time reviewers dedicate to preparing their evaluations. Reviewers will be consulted on a revised manuscript only if, in the editor's judgment, the paper has been significantly improved but still requires further expert input. The final responsibility for decisions on acceptance or rejection rests with the editor. In many cases, a decision can be reached based solely on the editor's evaluation of the revised manuscript and the authors' point-by-point responses. Therefore, reviewers are not automatically invited for a second round of review. Additional review—whether from the original reviewers or new ones—will be sought only when editorial evaluation indicates that further expert input is necessary to assess the revisions.

4. Recognition for Reviewers

ABS’s publisher AME has entered into an official partnership with Publons, as of April 2020. The partnership enables the contributions of our expert peer reviewers to be easily recognized. ABS’s peer review system is now integrated seamlessly into the Publons platform. As part of the review submission process, ABS reviewers can now opt in to Publons, and the review data can be transferred to Publons upon submission. For more information, please refer to: https://abs.amegroups.org/announcement/view/136.

5. To become a reviewer

If you would like to become a reviewer for our journal, please send an email to the Editorial Office (abs@amepc.org) with a copy of your CV attached and an indication of your review interests.

The review could be conducted either via the OJS system (https://abs.amegroups.org/login).

6. Guidance for peer reviewers

  • When you provide a review via our submission system, please declare any competing interests you may have in relation to the article. These could be of a personal, professional, or financial nature. For more details, please refer to: https://www.amegroups.com/pages/conflicts-of-interest#content-title.
  • Before writing your review, you may find it helpful to browse our guidelines for authors. Reviews should be conducted fairly and objectively. Criticism should be objective, not merely based on differences of opinion, and should aim to help the author improve their paper. Our journal requires authors to use reporting guidelines when writing a manuscript and to submit a completed checklist for each guideline. We encourage you to use this completed checklist included in the review task to aid in your review. Please first check whether the minimum information indicated in the checklist is included in the report and use the reporting guideline to aid in your assessment of the manuscript. If you find the checklist has been filled in incorrectly or that the manuscript does not actually include the information required by the checklist, as part of review comments, you could as well indicate what additional information must be reported. A reporting guideline may not be used to directly judge the quality of the methodology used in the study, but does suggest the kinds of questions that should be considered when designing a study.
  • All unpublished manuscripts are confidential documents. The existence of a manuscript under review should not be revealed to anyone other than the peer reviewers and editorial staff. Peer reviewers are required to maintain confidentiality regarding the manuscripts they review and must not divulge any information about a specific manuscript or its content to any third party without prior permission from the journal’s editors, which may prohibit the uploading of the manuscript to software or other AI technologies where confidentiality cannot be assured.
  • Guideline for Responsible AI Usage. Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely used in scholarly publishing. While improving the efficiency of scientific research and publishing operations, it has also introduced a series of publishing ethics and governance challenges. This guideline aims to provide a quick guidance to more standardized and responsible use of AI among the entire process of publication and dissemination of scholarly works across journals under AME Publishing Company.

Prior to formulating this guideline, we conducted an extensive research into the policies and discussions surrounding AI usage across multiple dimensions within the academic publishing community, including publishing peers, academic literature, academic organizations, ethics committees, and standards-setting bodies (1). The academic organizations, ethics committees, and standards-setting bodies covered in this research include the latest policies regarding AI usage from COPE, ICMJE, WAME, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (iSTIC), and the Chinese Medical Association, among others (2–17).

This guideline was developed based on the aforementioned research and will be updated in a timely manner according to ongoing developments in this area (such as AI evolution and updates in publishing regulations). Below is a brief summary of our guideline for peer reviewers.


IMPORTANT NOTICE

For the complete, detailed, and most up-to-date AME Publishing Company Guideline for Responsible AI Usage, please visit: https://www.amegroups.com/guideline-for-responsible-ai-usage.

The visual abstract of the latest guideline for responsible AI usage is available at: https://www.amegroups.com/ame-ai-policy-visual-abstract.

We strongly recommend that stakeholders read and familiarize yourself with the complete and updated AI policy, as it encompasses not only general principles and requirements for responsible AI use, but also detailed stakeholder-specific policies for authors, reviewers, the publisher, editors, readers, media, and scholarly disseminates, and precise guidelines across all stages of academic publishing—including idea generation, study design, literature searching, data collection, statistical analysis, table/figure generation, manuscript drafting, language polishing, cover letter drafting, peer review, response letter drafting, manuscript revision, reviewing of revisions, editorial decision-making, technical and compliance review, content editorial review, reviewer matching, formatting, copy-editing, conference posters, social media dissemination, etc.


Reviewers must recognize that all unpublished manuscripts are strictly confidential documents. During the peer review process, reviewers must NOT upload the full text or any portion of the manuscript, figure/table, data, supplementary materials, or core ideas and conclusions to any third-party platform or AI tool that cannot guarantee confidentiality. This requirement prevents sensitive information leaks and potential violations of patient privacy and intellectual property rights.

If reviewers utilize any AI-assisted tools during peer review, they must fully disclose this to the editor following the 4W1H principles:

  • Why: Reason or purpose for using AI (e.g., English is not the reviewer's native language, used to enhance readability)
  • When: Timing of AI usage relative to your independent review (e.g., AI assisted concurrently, AI assisted first then double checked and supplemented by reviewer, or reviewer conducted independent review first then used AI for supplementary input)
  • Where: Which specific comments in the review report involved AI (e.g., Comment X was formulated with AI assistance)
  • What: Name, version, model of the AI tool, and whether it was connected to the internet (e.g., ChatGPT 4.0 offline / locally deployed Tool X).
  • How: The process, method, and prompts used; how privacy and data security were guaranteed; and whether the reviewer supervised, reviewed, and validated the authenticity, accuracy, relevance, and validity of the AI output.

If undisclosed or inadequately disclosed AI usage in the peer review process is discovered during or after publication, the relevant review comments and manuscript may undergo re-evaluation or post-publication handling.

For detailed guidelines on permitted and prohibited scenarios for reviewers (e.g., decision-making, generating standalone review reports, polishing readability), disclosure timing, detailed disclosure templates, publication principles as well as AI policies for authors, publishers/editors, readers, media, and scholarly disseminators, please read the full policy: https://www.amegroups.com/ame-ai-policy-visual-abstract.

  • Reviewers must not recommend excessive citations of their own work (self-citations), another author's work (honorary citations), or articles from the journal to which the manuscript was submitted as a means of inflating citation counts. References may be suggested as needed, but must clearly improve the quality of the manuscript under review, accompanied by a rationale.
  • If we invite you to review an article and you choose to discuss the manuscript with a colleague, please remind them of the confidential nature of the paper and acknowledge their input in your review. Please also encourage your colleagues to register as reviewers.
  • If you have any serious concerns relating to the publication ethics of a manuscript (e.g., if you believe you have encountered a case of plagiarism), you can contact the Editorial Office in confidence.

We are very grateful to all of the reviewers who have supported our journal so far. For more guidance on effective peer review, you may refer to: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12658579/.

References*

  1. Xie S, Shang B, Hu Y, Jiang F, Chen Y, Zhang K. Policy consensus, disagreements, and gaps regarding the use of artificial intelligence in authors, reviewers, publishers, editors, readers, and scholarship dissemination: a narrative review focus on medical scholarly publishing, analyzing attitudes of 6 institutions, 8 publishers, 139 journals and hundreds of articles. Ann Transl Med 2026. doi: 10.21037/atm-2026-0169.
  2. Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Wolters Kluwer, et al. Guideline on the Boundaries of AIGC Usage in Academic Publishing 3.0 [Internet] 2025. Available online:  https://files.sciengine.com/gridfs/2001556325267406848/%E9%99%84%E4%BB%B61-%E5%AD%A6%E6%9C%AF%E5%87%BA%E7%89%88%E4%B8%ADAIGC%E4%BD%BF%E7%94%A8%E8%BE%B9.pdf
  3. ICMJE 2025 Recommendations Update . Available online:  https://www.synpharm.com/en/icmje-2025-recommendations-update/
  4. COPE Council. COPE position-Authorship and AI. Available online: https://doi.org/10.24318/cCVRZBms
  5. ICMJE. Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals Updated January 2026. Available online: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/
  6. STM. Recommendations for a Classification of AI Use in Academic Manuscript Preparation [updated September 22, 2025. Available online: https://stm-assoc.org/document/recommendations-for-a-classification-of-ai-use-in-academic-manuscript-preparation/
  7. COPE Council. Artificial intelligence (AI) in decision making. Available online:  https://doi.org/10.24318/9kvAgrnJ 
  8. COPE Council Member. Artificial intelligence and peer review. Available online:  https://publicationethics.org/guidance/seminar-and-webinar/artificial-intelligence-and-peer-review 
  9. Advice from COPE Members. Editors suspect that reviewers are using artificial intelligence. Available online: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/case/editors-suspect-reviewers-are-using-artificial-intelligence 
  10. COPE topic discussion. Emerging AI dilemmas in scholarly publishing. Available online:  https://publicationethics.org/topic-discussions/emerging-ai-dilemmas-scholarly-publishing
  11. Advice from COPE Council. Should there be limits to the editorial use of assistive AI tools? Available online: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/case/should-there-be-limits-editorial-use-assistive-ai-tools
  12. Chinese Medical Association. Regulations on the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence Technology in Paper Writing and Reviewing Processes. Available online: http://www.ircip.cn/bbx/993896-1711299.html?id=26645&newsid=5252883
  13. Zielinski C, Winker MA, Aggarwal R, et al. Chatbots, generative AI, and scholarly manuscripts: WAME recommendations on chatbots and generative artificial intelligence in relation to scholarly publications. Colomb Med (Cali) 2023;54:e1015868. Available online: https://wame.org/page3.php?id=106
  14. AI Ethics in Scholarly Communication | STM [updated May 10, 2021. Available online: https://stm-assoc.org/document/stm-ai-white-paper/
  15. Global Publishing and Journalism Organizations Unite to Release Comprehensive Global Principles for Artificial Intelligence (AI) [updated September 17, 2023]. Available online: https://stm-assoc.org/document/global-publishing-and-journalism-organizations-unite-to-release-comprehensive-global-principles-for-artificial-intelligence-ai/
  16. Generative AI In Scholarly Communications  [updated December 19, 2023]. Available online: https://stm-assoc.org/document/stm-generative-ai-paper-2023/
  17. STM Statement regarding unlicensed use of STM’s members’ content in the training, development, and operation of AI models [updated July 10, 2024]. Available online: https://stm-assoc.org/document/stm-statement-regarding-unlicensed-use-of-stms-members-content-in-the-training-development-and-operation-of-ai-models/

*Please note for better guidance and illustration, external links are included in the references but the journal does not endorse or take responsibility or liability for any content, advertising, products, or other materials on the externally linked sites, and does not take responsibility for the sites' availability.


Updated on November 12, 2026