Journal of Otolaryngology Advances · For Reviewers
For reviewers
A working guide to reviewing clinical, surgical, translational, laboratory and methodological ENT research: assess the contribution, match evidence expectations to the design, and distinguish findings from interpretation.
Single-blind by default; double-blind on request Reports requested within 14 to 21 days Manuscripts are confidential
Accepting or declining an invitation
Decide two things from the abstract: whether you can assess what this manuscript actually turns on, and whether anything about your relationship to the work would make a reader doubt your report. Declining quickly is more useful than accepting slowly.
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Expertise fit
Accept where you can judge the substance. If the manuscript rests on a method you cannot evaluate — a survival analysis, a psychoacoustic protocol, a histopathological classification — say so when you accept, so the editor can commission a second reviewer for that part rather than assume it is covered.
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Competing interests
Decline where you are at the authors’ institution, are a recent co-author, collaborator, trainee or supervisor, hold a financial interest in a product or company under study, or are working on a directly competing manuscript. Where you are unsure, disclose it to the editor and let them decide.
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Time
Reports are requested within 14 to 21 days. If that is not possible, decline or tell the editorial office when you could deliver, so the manuscript is not held waiting. Suggesting an alternative reviewer when you decline is a substantial help.
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Review model
Peer review is single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors. If the identity is obvious from the text, note it to the editor and continue on the substance.
Confidentiality and file handling
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The manuscript is confidential
Do not disclose its existence or contents, do not use its data or ideas in your own work before publication, and do not show it to anyone without the editor’s agreement. Involving a colleague or a trainee in the review is permitted only when the editor agrees, and the contributor is named in the report.
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After you submit the report
After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
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AI tools
Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured. This applies to all unapproved externally hosted AI tools, not only public ones.
What a JOA review should establish
A central, substantive ENT contribution establishes scope eligibility. Methods and evaluation must support the claims and be appropriate to the study type; clinical deployment or demonstrated patient benefit is not required for every laboratory, mechanistic or early-stage device study. Evaluate bench controls, model assumptions and technical validation where relevant. Do not demand patient outcomes from a study that makes only a laboratory or methodological claim.
Otolaryngological evidence is bound tightly to measurement: a hearing threshold, a symptom score, a swallow study, a voice recording and a surgical margin are all quantities produced under conditions that decide what they mean. Much of a good review is checking that those conditions were reported.
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Question and design
Is the question clearly stated, and can this design answer it? Note where a retrospective series is used to answer a comparative question, or where a single-arm study is presented as evidence of superiority.
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Participants and selection
Who was included, how they were identified, who was excluded and why. In surgical series, whether case selection, the surgeon’s experience or a learning curve could account for the result.
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Intervention and comparator
Is the procedure or device described in enough detail to be repeated — approach, instrumentation, settings, adjuncts, perioperative care — and is the comparator a fair one, or is it historical or from another era of practice?
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Outcomes and instruments
Are the outcomes defined before they are reported, and are the instruments named with their version and validated translation? Audiometric outcomes should state the frequencies averaged and the masking and calibration conditions; patient-reported instruments should state the score range and the direction of improvement.
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Follow-up and completeness
Is the follow-up long enough for the outcome claimed? Are losses to follow-up reported and accounted for, and could those lost differ systematically from those retained?
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Statistics
Is the analysis appropriate to the data and the design; are repeated measures, clustering by patient or by ear, and multiple comparisons handled; are effect estimates given with confidence intervals rather than p-values alone; is any sample-size calculation stated with its assumptions; and if the study is underpowered, is that acknowledged rather than read as a negative result?
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Safety
Are complications and adverse events reported alongside benefit, with denominators, and over the same follow-up period as the benefit?
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Reporting completeness
Does the manuscript follow the reporting guideline for its design — CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, CARE, STARD or ARRIVE — and is the checklist supplied? Name the specific items that are missing rather than the guideline as a whole.
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Figures, tables and data
Do the numbers agree between the abstract, the text, the tables and the figures? Are figures legible, with scales, units and denominators, and do the legends say what is shown? Note any figure that appears spliced, duplicated or selectively adjusted, and any table whose totals do not reconcile.
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Literature and attribution
Are the claims about prior work accurate, and is a significant body of contrary evidence dealt with rather than omitted? Note text that reads as though it came from another source. Do not require citation of your own work.
Separating evidence from interpretation
Most disagreements between a reviewer and an author are really disagreements about which of four things a sentence is doing. Naming which one, for the specific sentence, turns an argument into a revision the author can make.
| Layer | The question | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence | What was measured, in whom, under what conditions? | The measurement conditions are unreported, so the number cannot be interpreted |
| Interpretation | What does the measurement mean scientifically or clinically? | A statistically significant difference is reported as a clinically important one, with no reference to a minimal important difference |
| Causality | Did the intervention produce the outcome? | An observational association, or a before-and-after series with no control, is described as an effect of the intervention |
| Generalizability | To whom does this apply? | A result from one center, one surgeon, one device or one selected population is written as practice guidance |
Ethics, consent and patient privacy
Check these on every manuscript that reports on people, their tissue or their records. They are the reviewer’s check on requirements the journal has already asked authors to meet.
- Ethics approval or documented exemption is stated, with the approving body and reference
- Informed consent is stated, or the waiver and the body that granted it are named
- Written consent to publication is stated for every identifiable patient, photograph, endoscopic image, radiograph or operative video
- Identifying detail not essential to the clinical point has been removed — a facial image, a rare diagnosis, a date and an institution together can identify a person even with the eyes masked
- An interventional trial reports its registry name, number and registration date, and the registration date is consistent with enrollment
- Animal work names the animal-care committee and protocol, and describes housing, anesthesia, analgesia and euthanasia
- Off-label or unapproved use of a device or drug is disclosed with its regulatory status
- A data-availability statement is present, and its access route is realistic for the data described
- Funding and competing interests are declared, and the declarations are consistent with the study described
Writing the report
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01
Summary
Two or three sentences on what the study did and found, in your own words. It shows the editor and the authors that the manuscript was read as intended, and it often exposes a mismatch between what was done and what is claimed.
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02
Major points
Numbered, each naming the section and page, stating the problem, and stating what would resolve it — an additional analysis, a reported number, a narrowed conclusion, or an acknowledged limitation. Reserve this list for points that bear on whether the conclusion stands.
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Minor points
Numbered separately: inconsistencies, undefined abbreviations, figure legends, reference errors. Keep them apart from the major points so the author can see what is essential.
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04
Confidential comments to the editor
Anything the editor needs and the authors should not receive directly: a suspected integrity problem, a limit on your own expertise, or a competing interest you noticed while reading.
Write to the authors as colleagues. Comment on the manuscript, never on the people who wrote it, and never on their institution, their country or their command of English — language is a production matter and is not a scientific objection. A report that is specific and demanding is a service to the authors; one that is dismissive is not.
The recommendation
| Recommendation | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Accept | The conclusions are supported and the reporting is complete. Rare on a first review, and a legitimate outcome on a revision. |
| Minor revision | The conclusions stand. What remains is bounded and checkable — a reported number, a clarified definition, a corrected figure — and does not need another round of review. |
| Major revision | The study may support a conclusion, but not yet the one that is drawn: an analysis is missing, a confounder is unaddressed, or the claim exceeds the design. Say what the revised manuscript would have to show. |
| Reject | The design cannot answer the question, the reporting is too incomplete to assess, or an ethical requirement cannot be met. Say which, so the authors can judge whether the work is recoverable. |
Scope is the editor’s decision, not the reviewer’s. Where a manuscript seems outside the journal’s territory, say so in the confidential comments rather than making it the substance of the report.
If you suspect a problem
Suspected plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication, image manipulation, fabricated or internally inconsistent data, undisclosed competing interests, or missing ethical approval: report these to the editor in the confidential comments, with the specific evidence — the sentence, the figure panel, the earlier publication, the inconsistent table.
Set out what you observed and let the editorial office assess it. A reviewer is not asked to investigate, and should not contact the authors or their institution directly. Concerns raised in good faith are handled confidentially; the identity of the person raising them is not disclosed to the authors without their agreement.
The editorial policies page sets out how the journal handles an allegation once it is raised.
Where to go next
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Editorial policies
Confidentiality, competing interests, ethics and the integrity of the record.
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Instructions for authors
What authors were asked to do — the standard a manuscript is held to.
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Aims and scope
The journal’s territory, and what falls outside it.
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For editors
How the editor uses a report, and what they are accountable for.
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Current issue
Recently published work, as a guide to the journal’s standard.
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Editorial board
The editors who commission and act on reviews.
Reviewing for JOA
Questions about an invitation, a deadline, a possible conflict of interest, or a concern you would rather raise before accepting can be sent to the editorial office with the manuscript reference.
Journal of Otolaryngology Advances (JOA)
ISSN 2379-8572 · Crossref DOI prefix 10.14302 ·
Published by Open Access Pub ·
Articles are published under CC BY 4.0 with copyright retained by the authors.