Invitation to Review

The email invitation to review includes links to accept or decline. Before you accept, please ensure that the manuscript content is close enough to your area of expertise to allow you to provide useful input and a prompt review. If that is not the case, please decline; your suggestions for alternate reviewers are welcomed.

Reviewing the Manuscript and Writing the Report

Peer review reports should be in English and provide constructive critical evaluations of the authors’ work, particularly in relation to the appropriateness of methods used, whether the results are accurate, and whether the conclusions are supported by the results. Editorial decisions should be based on peer reviewer comments that meet these criteria rather than on recommendations made by short, superficial peer reviewer reports which do not provide a rationale for the recommendations.

We suggest dividing your review into three parts: (I) Recommendation; (II) Comments to the editors only; (III) Comments intended for both the author(s) and the editors.

Recommendation:

Your report should include a recommendation to accept, revise and reconsider, or reject the manuscript. Please provide reasons for your recommendation.

Comments intended for both the author(s) and the editors:

We ask reviewers the following types of questions, to provide an assessment of the various aspects of a manuscript:

• Key results: Please summarize what you consider to be the outstanding features of the work.
• Validity: Does the manuscript have flaws which should prohibit its publication? If so, please provide details.
• Originality and significance: If the conclusions are not original, please provide relevant references.
• Data & methodology: Please comment on the validity of the approach, quality of the data and quality of presentation. Please note that we expect our reviewers to review all data, including any extended data and supplementary information. Is the reporting of data and methodology sufficiently detailed and transparent to enable reproducing the results?
• Appropriate use of statistics and treatment of uncertainties: All error bars should be defined in the corresponding figure legends; please comment if that’s not the case. Please include in your report a specific comment on the appropriateness of any statistical tests, and the accuracy of the description of any error bars and probability values.
• Conclusions: Do you find that the conclusions and data interpretation are robust, valid and reliable?
• Inflammatory material: Does the manuscript contain any language that is inappropriate or potentially libelous?
• Suggested improvements: Please list suggestions that could help strengthen the work in a revision.
• References: Does this manuscript reference previous literature appropriately? If not, what references should be included or excluded? Attempts at reviewer-coerced citation will be noted against your record in our database.
• Clarity and context: Is the abstract clear, accessible? Are abstract, introduction and conclusions appropriate?
• Please indicate any particular part of the manuscript, data, or analyses that you feel is outside the scope of your expertise, or that you were unable to assess fully.

Reports do not necessarily need to follow this specific order but should document the peer reviewer’s thought process. All statements should be justified and argued in detail, naming facts and citing supporting references, commenting on all aspects that are relevant to the manuscript and that the reviewers feel qualified commenting on. Not all of the above aspects will necessarily apply to every paper, due to discipline-specific standards. When in doubt about discipline-specific peer-reviewing standards, reviewers can contact the Editor for guidance.

Comments intended for the editors only:

This section is where you may include confidential remarks for the editor. These comments may include your thoughts on why the paper is right or wrong for NST, reasons behind your recommendation, or other information you feel would be useful.