Peer Reviewer Conduct and Intellectual Property

Management Science Advances (MSA) regards peer review as an essential component of scholarly publishing. Reviewers are expected to conduct reviews objectively, independently, confidentially, constructively, and in accordance with recognized principles of publication ethics.

Reviewers should accept a review assignment only when they have sufficient expertise to evaluate the manuscript and can reasonably complete the review within the requested period. If a reviewer is unable to provide an appropriately informed or timely assessment, the invitation should be declined or the responsible editor should be informed as soon as possible.

Objectivity and Professional Conduct

Peer-review reports should provide a fair, evidence-based, and constructive assessment of the manuscript. Comments should focus on the scholarly content, including the originality, methodology, theoretical or mathematical development, analysis, validity of the results, interpretation, presentation, and relevance of the work.

Reviewers should clearly explain significant criticisms and, where appropriate, provide sufficient reasoning to allow authors and editors to understand the basis of their assessment.

Personal criticism, hostile or discriminatory language, defamatory statements, and comments unrelated to the scholarly assessment of the manuscript are not acceptable.

Reviewers must not allow personal, professional, institutional, commercial, ideological, or other unrelated considerations to influence their scientific assessment.

Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that could compromise, or reasonably be perceived to compromise, their independence or impartiality.

Relevant conflicts may arise from financial, personal, professional, academic, institutional, collaborative, or competitive relationships with the authors, their institutions, organizations associated with the research, or the subject matter of the manuscript.

If a reviewer identifies a relevant conflict before accepting an invitation, the reviewer should disclose it to the responsible editor and, where appropriate, decline the review. If a potential conflict becomes apparent after the review has begun, the reviewer must promptly inform the responsible editor, who will determine whether the reviewer should continue or withdraw.

Further requirements concerning competing interests are provided in the journal's Conflict of Interests policy.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts submitted for review and all associated materials must be treated as confidential. Reviewers must not disclose, reproduce, distribute, or share manuscripts, supplementary files, review materials, editorial correspondence, or information obtained through the peer-review process with unauthorized individuals.

Reviewers must not independently involve colleagues, students, collaborators, or other individuals in the review without prior authorization from the responsible editor. Where additional expertise is considered necessary, the reviewer should contact the editor.

Information obtained through peer review must not be used for personal, professional, academic, financial, or commercial advantage or to disadvantage the authors or any other party.

Intellectual Property

Reviewers must respect the intellectual property contained in unpublished manuscripts. Unpublished ideas, hypotheses, data, methods, models, algorithms, analyses, results, figures, tables, computational procedures, or other scholarly contributions obtained through peer review must not be appropriated or incorporated into the reviewer's own work or the work of another person without appropriate authorization from the authors.

Reviewers must not use privileged knowledge obtained through peer review to advance competing research, commercial activities, patent applications, funding proposals, or other professional interests.

General requirements concerning the protection of unpublished manuscript material are provided in the journal's Protecting Intellectual Property policy.

Use of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies

Reviewers must not upload submitted manuscripts, manuscript excerpts, figures, tables, supplementary materials, or other confidential peer-review content to generative AI systems or AI-assisted tools.

Generative AI and AI-assisted tools must not be used to analyze, summarize, evaluate, or review submitted manuscripts or to generate or edit peer-review reports. Reviewers remain personally responsible for the scientific assessment, accuracy, integrity, originality, and confidentiality of their reviews.

Detailed requirements are provided in the journal's Use of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Tools policy.

Citations and References

Reviewers may recommend additional references where they are genuinely relevant and necessary to improve the scholarly quality, accuracy, context, or completeness of the manuscript.

Reviewers must not request citations primarily for the purpose of increasing citations to their own work, the work of colleagues or associates, particular institutions, MSA, or any other journal. Citation recommendations must be based solely on scholarly relevance.

Requirements concerning citation manipulation are further addressed in the journal's Publication Integrity policy.

Suspected Ethical or Integrity Concerns

If a reviewer identifies suspected plagiarism, fabrication or falsification, duplicate or redundant publication, inappropriate image manipulation, authorship irregularities, citation manipulation, ethical concerns, or another possible breach of publication integrity, the reviewer should confidentially inform the responsible editor and provide sufficient information to allow the concern to be assessed.

Reviewers should not independently investigate authors, contact their institutions, or communicate allegations directly to the authors unless specifically requested to do so by the journal.

Such concerns will be handled in accordance with the journal's Procedures for Dealing with Allegations of Unethical Behaviour.

Reviewer Anonymity and Communication

MSA operates a double-blind peer-review process. Reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors, and reviewers should not disclose their identities to authors during the review process.

Reviewers must not contact authors directly concerning a manuscript under review. Questions, requests for clarification, ethical concerns, or other communication relating to the manuscript should be directed through the responsible editor or Editorial Office.