Journal of Depression And Therapy
Reviewer Guidelines
What the journal asks of a peer reviewer, from the invitation to the report. Reviewing for this journal is an act of scholarship, and the journal treats it as one.
- Review Model
- Single-blind by default; double-blind on request
- Your Role
- Advisory; the decision rests with the editor
- Confidentiality
- Absolute, during and after review
1. Deciding on the Invitation
Three questions, and a clear answer to any of them is worth more to the editor than a late or reluctant review.
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Do You Cover It
Accept where the manuscript's subject and method are within your own competence. If you can assess part of it — the clinical content but not the statistics, the method but not the population — accept and say which part you are speaking to. That is more useful than declining, and it tells the editor what else to seek.
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Are You Free of a Competing Interest
Decline where you have worked with the authors recently, share an institution, have a financial or personal interest in the outcome, 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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Can You Do It Properly
Decline if you cannot give the manuscript a careful reading. Tell the editorial office promptly either way, and suggest an alternative reviewer if one comes to mind.
2. Handling the Manuscript
An unpublished manuscript is the authors' property and is confidential from the moment you open it.
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. An invitation may therefore name the authors or withhold them; handle both the same way.
- Do not disclose the manuscript's existence or content, and do not discuss it with anyone outside the review process
- Do not use unpublished material for your own research, teaching or writing
- Where you involve a colleague or a trainee in the review, get the editor's agreement first and name them in your report
- 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.
- After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
- For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors.
3. Assessing the Work
Judge the manuscript against what it claims, and against the standards of the design it uses.
Scope is the editor's question, not yours. If you think the subject sits outside the journal, say so in your confidential comments and carry on assessing the work. Do not convert a scope reservation into a methodological objection.
The claim sets the bar. A study reporting an association is assessed as an association study. Ask for the design, sample and analysis that a causal, predictive, efficacy or clinical-use claim needs only when the manuscript makes such a claim. Do not require novelty, a demonstrated mechanism or a clinical benefit the manuscript does not claim, and do not ask a qualitative, conceptual, measurement or replication study to become a trial.
Design and Method
- Is the question stated clearly, and does the design answer it?
- Are participants, setting and eligibility described well enough to judge to whom the result applies?
- For an intervention: is its content, duration, frequency and fidelity described; are adherence, attrition and protocol deviations reported; is the trial registered?
- Are the depression measures named, validated for the population, and applied at stated times?
- For qualitative work: are sampling, analysis and reflexivity described on the terms that tradition sets?
- For a synthesis: are the search, eligibility criteria and appraisal reproducible?
Analysis and Reporting
- Is the statistical approach appropriate, with missing data handled and explained?
- Are effect sizes and uncertainty reported, not only significance?
- Do the figures and tables show what the text says they show, and is any image manipulation apparent?
- Is there a data-availability statement, and is any access restriction explained rather than merely asserted?
- Do the conclusions stay within what the results support, and are limitations stated?
Ethics and Integrity
- Is ethics approval named with its reference, and is participant consent described?
- Is there identifiable patient material without evidence of consent to publish?
- Do you suspect plagiarism, duplicate publication, image manipulation or data fabrication? Raise it with the editor in your confidential comments with the specific evidence, and leave the investigation to the editorial office.
Do not request citations that do not bear on the manuscript's argument, and do not request citations to your own work unless the manuscript genuinely needs them.
4. Writing the Report
Write for two readers: the authors, who must be able to act on it, and the editor, who must be able to weigh it.
- Open With the Substance
- Summarize in two or three sentences what the manuscript does and what you take its main contribution to be. That summary lets the editor see at once whether you and the authors read the paper the same way.
- Separate Essential From Optional
- Number the points that must be addressed and keep them apart from suggestions the authors may take or leave. An unranked list of twenty comments hides which three matter.
- Be Specific and Checkable
- Point to the section, table or figure, say what is wrong, and where possible say what would settle it. "The analysis is inadequate" cannot be acted on; naming the assumption that was not tested can.
- Address the Work
- Comment on the manuscript, not on the authors. A firm, even severe, judgment of the work is entirely in order; a remark about the people who wrote it is not.
- Recommendation
- Give the editor a clear recommendation — accept, minor revision, major revision, or decline — and confidential comments where you have reservations you do not want to put to the authors. The recommendation is advisory: the decision rests with the handling editor.
- Revised Manuscripts
- On a revision, assess whether the points you raised were addressed, and resist introducing new requirements that could have been raised the first time unless the revision itself creates them.
Questions and Support
Questions about an invitation, a competing interest, an extension or a concern you would rather raise privately go to the editorial office at [email protected].
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal. Reviewing confers no advantage in the review of a reviewer's own submissions.