Reviewer's Information

The purpose of this journal is to provide expert clinical decision support (CDS) knowledge to practicing physicians and healthcare workers to answer complex questions in simple concise ways. In most cases the authors are pre-selected experts with articles following structured outlines.  Thus, the bar for acceptance is much lower than for review of original research from a poorly recognized group. 

Reviewer's decision will be: Accept; Minor Revisions; Major Revisions; Reject; no decision.

Reviewer's task as a reviewer is to provide constructive criticism to improve the article (unless it needs to be rejected).

Some articles will be based on the authors expert opinion and clinical practice. This is considered important as general practitioners want to know what an expert would do, given a patient that is like the one they are evaluating or managing. 

Reviewer's assessment should consider quality standards, including:

a) Are the recommendations reasonable, based on the state of the art in the field?

b) Are alternative approaches presented fairly?

c) Is the introduction of the problem clear and supported by evidence (i.e., key references)

d) Is the problem explained (with or without criteria or figures) and framed by useful tables on the differential diagnosis, overlapping conditions, common complications, useful biomarkers for diagnosis and disease tracking, and other supporting information?

e) Are there important societal consensus statements that are missing that should be available to the reader (listed or referenced)?

f) Is there or should there be a clinical pathway with clear CDS steps and criteria for proceeding down one pathway or another.  

Reviewer's comments can be brief and to the point, copied to the Authors and/or the Editors (not every item in the assessment needs to be addressed)

Reviewer's Recognition.  The Editorial Board of SMART-MD JPM believes that readers should recognize the quality of the reviewers as well as the quality of the authors.  You are invited as a reviewer because of your contributions to one or more fields that are relevant to this Journal. We invite you to complete the additional information on your profile. With your permission you will be added onto the Journal's Editorial Board - who also serve as primary reviewers.  The detailed information about yourself that you would like to include will be made available to viewers (healthcare workers, patients, industry, other). Please contact the Editor for more information.

Competing Interests

Please contact the Editor if you have a potential conflicts or competing interest with any of the authors, or are employed at a university or practice share by any of the authors.