The primary goal of the contents of this guide is to ensure that the peer review process conducted at ECCSS is characterized by:

• Ensuring an independent review and conveying constructive feedback to authors respectfully.
• Ensuring that manuscripts present a comprehensible, objective, and balanced overview of their respective themes.
• Reviewing to offer up-to-date, scientifically available, and verifiable information.
• Reviewing that the conclusions or arguments derived from the research are intelligible and relevant to the discipline.

Instructions on Confidentiality and Ethical Behavior

Confidentiality

All manuscripts are confidential information. Thus, reviewers are requested to refrain from displaying or discussing them with third parties unless it is to seek advice on a specific aspect, maintaining confidentiality in this instance as well.

Ethical Behavior

ECCSS expects from the reviewers involved in its editorial process that:

• If a reviewer considers there is someone else with a greater capacity to assess the relevance of the material, they should communicate this to the editorial team.
• If the reviewer believes they will have difficulty conducting an objective evaluation of the material, they should immediately inform the editorial team.
• If there is a current or past relationship between the reviewer and any institutions or individuals associated with the manuscript that could lead to a conflict of interest, they should reflect this fact in the Review Form and decline the evaluation.

Deadlines for Review

Once a reviewer has accepted the commitment to evaluate a manuscript, they must issue their report within twenty days.

Structure and Style of Review Reports

Reviewers will issue their report by completing the Evaluation Form and respecting the following guidelines:

• The peer review process serves a dual purpose: to advise the editorial team on the advisability of publishing the manuscript and to communicate any improvements that could be made to the work.
• The reviewer should be aware that their role is to advise ECCSS as a specialist on the work another colleague has done, not to judge or decide. Therefore, the tone used in the reports will always be of utmost respect for the people and institutions.
• All critiques and appreciations must be objective, and not merely differences of opinion or personal evaluations without substantiation.
• Critiques should always be directed at the argumentation and the consistency of the data presented, never at the authors.

Information on Aspects to Evaluate

General and specific aspects of the manuscript will be evaluated to determine if the research described:

1. Represents an advancement in knowledge and is relevant to the discipline.
2. Meets the level of argumentation, content structure, and writing required for scientific communications.
3. Is of interest to the journal's target audience.

Evaluation of General Aspects

• The degree of originality of the work.
• The importance it holds for the progress of the discipline, and if applicable, other social, cultural, or economic implications.

Evaluation of Specific Aspects

An evaluation of specific aspects, grouped into the following blocks:

1. Writing

The clarity and precision with which the manuscript has been written, both in the body of the text and in the titles, abstracts, and keywords, which should unambiguously reflect the main theme of the research.

2. Extension and Structure

It is valued that the text is structured in logical sections to efficiently convey information, and if any of these sections require expansion, reduction, or removal.

3. Methodology and Clarity

In this block, it is valued that the analytical methods and criteria have been chosen wisely and that the research process is described with the clarity necessary for the work to be replicated by another qualified researcher.

4. Results and Conclusions

It is valued that both the arguments and the key results are clearly identified in the manuscript, and that the conclusions are derived from the analysis of these.

5. Citations and References

This section evaluates whether all the citations and references used in the text are relevant, up-to-date, and adhere to the latest edition of the APA guidelines.

6. Coincidences

The reviewer will indicate if they are aware of the existence of other works, published or to be published, whose content is identical or very similar to the manuscript being evaluated.