Reviewer Guidelines

The Journal of Responsible AI & Ethics (JRAIE) recognizes peer review as an essential component of scholarly quality assurance and research integrity. Reviewers contribute independent subject expertise to the editorial process by evaluating the scholarly quality, originality, methodological appropriateness, ethical integrity, clarity, and relevance of manuscripts submitted to the journal.

JRAIE follows a double-blind peer-review model. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from one another during the review process. Manuscripts considered suitable following the initial editorial assessment are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant academic or professional expertise.

Reviewers are expected to provide objective, evidence-based, constructive, and sufficiently detailed assessments that assist editors in reaching informed editorial decisions and help authors improve the scholarly quality of their manuscripts. A reviewer recommendation informs the editorial process but does not, by itself, determine the final decision. Final editorial responsibility remains with the Editor-in-Chief or the editor authorized to manage the manuscript.

Reviewer Responsibilities

Reviewers should undertake an assignment only when they possess sufficient expertise to evaluate the principal subject matter, methodology, conceptual framework, or interdisciplinary contribution of the manuscript.

Before accepting an invitation, a prospective reviewer should consider whether they can conduct the review objectively and within the time requested by the journal. If the manuscript falls substantially outside the reviewer's expertise, or circumstances prevent a careful and timely evaluation, the reviewer should decline the invitation promptly.

Reviewers are expected to:

• evaluate manuscripts fairly and independently;

• assess the scholarly contribution rather than the identity, status, nationality, institution, or background of the authors;

• provide reasoned comments supported by scholarly considerations;

• identify significant methodological, theoretical, analytical, ethical, or reporting concerns;

• distinguish essential revisions from optional recommendations;

• maintain the confidentiality of all manuscript and review materials;

• disclose relevant conflicts of interest before undertaking the review;

• avoid using privileged information obtained through peer review for personal, academic, financial, professional, or competitive advantage;

• notify the editor of suspected research or publication-integrity concerns through confidential editorial communication; and

• avoid inappropriate, discriminatory, hostile, defamatory, or personally directed remarks.

The purpose of peer review is scholarly evaluation. Reviewer comments should therefore focus on the manuscript and its contribution rather than on assumptions concerning the authors.

Confidentiality of Manuscripts

All manuscripts received for peer review must be treated as confidential documents.

Reviewers must not share, distribute, reproduce, publicly discuss, publish, or otherwise disclose the manuscript, supplementary material, unpublished data, reviewer correspondence, or other confidential information obtained through the review process unless expressly authorized by the journal.

A reviewer must not involve another person in the evaluation of a manuscript without prior authorization from the responsible editor. Where authorized assistance is provided, the contribution must be disclosed to the journal so that confidentiality and accountability can be appropriately maintained.

Unpublished ideas, methods, data, arguments, analyses, results, or other information obtained through peer review must not be appropriated or used for the reviewer's own research, publication, commercial activities, professional advantage, or the disadvantage of the authors.

Confidentiality obligations continue after the review has been submitted and after an editorial decision has been reached.

Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that could affect their independence or create reasonable doubt about the impartiality of the review.

Potential conflicts may arise from financial relationships, professional collaborations, institutional connections, academic competition, personal relationships, intellectual disagreements, supervisory relationships, or other circumstances relevant to the manuscript or its authors.

Because JRAIE uses double-blind peer review, reviewers may not always know the identity of the authors. If a reviewer nevertheless recognizes or reasonably infers an author's identity and believes that this creates a conflict of interest, the reviewer should inform the editor without attempting to investigate the author's identity further.

Disclosure of a potential conflict does not automatically disqualify a reviewer. The responsible editor will determine whether the conflict is sufficiently significant to require reassignment of the manuscript.

Criteria for Evaluating a Manuscript

A review should consider the manuscript as a complete scholarly contribution while recognizing that evaluation criteria may vary according to article type and research design.

Reviewers should consider, where applicable:

Relevance to the Journal

The manuscript should have a clear relationship to responsible artificial intelligence, AI ethics, governance, fairness, transparency, accountability, explainability, human oversight, AI policy, societal impacts, or another area included within the stated aims and scope of JRAIE.

Originality and Scholarly Contribution

The manuscript should demonstrate a meaningful scholarly contribution. Reviewers should assess whether the work advances understanding, develops or evaluates an approach, contributes evidence, provides a substantive theoretical or conceptual argument, or offers another defensible contribution to the relevant literature.

Research Question and Objectives

Research questions, hypotheses, or objectives should be clearly stated and appropriately connected to the manuscript's theoretical, empirical, methodological, or policy context.

Methodological Quality

The selected research design, methods, data sources, analytical procedures, and evaluation approaches should be suitable for addressing the stated research objectives. Reviewers should identify methodological weaknesses that materially affect the reliability, reproducibility, validity, or interpretation of the findings.

Results and Evidence

Results should be presented accurately and supported by the methods and evidence reported in the manuscript. Conclusions should not materially exceed what can reasonably be supported by the study design and findings.

Discussion and Interpretation

The discussion should provide a meaningful interpretation of the findings and appropriately relate them to relevant scholarship. Limitations, uncertainties, alternative explanations, and practical or theoretical implications should be acknowledged where appropriate.

Ethical and Responsible AI Considerations

For research involving artificial intelligence, reviewers should consider whether relevant ethical concerns have been appropriately recognized. Depending on the subject, these may include algorithmic bias, fairness, accountability, transparency, explainability, privacy, data governance, safety, human oversight, accessibility, inclusiveness, or potential societal consequences.

Research Ethics

Where research involves human participants, personal or sensitive data, animals, or another area requiring ethical oversight, reviewers should consider whether appropriate ethical approval, informed consent, permissions, or related information has been reported where applicable.

Clarity and Scholarly Presentation

The manuscript should communicate its argument, methodology, findings, and conclusions in a coherent academic manner. Reviewers may identify substantive language or presentation problems but are not expected to function primarily as copyeditors.

References and Engagement with Literature

References should be relevant to the manuscript and sufficient to position the study within the existing scholarly literature. Reviewers should identify important omissions when they materially affect the validity or interpretation of the manuscript.

Citation Recommendations

Reviewers may recommend additional literature when a substantive omission affects the manuscript's scholarly context, methodology, interpretation, or conclusions. Such recommendations should be academically justified.

Reviewers must not require authors to cite the reviewer's own publications, articles from JRAIE, or publications from a particular researcher or journal merely to increase citation counts. Citation recommendations should be based exclusively on genuine scholarly relevance.

Requests for excessive, irrelevant, coercive, or self-serving citations are inconsistent with responsible peer-review practice.

Research and Publication-Integrity Concerns

Reviewers should remain attentive to possible concerns involving plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication, fabricated or falsified data, inappropriate image manipulation, questionable authorship practices, citation manipulation, undisclosed conflicts of interest, unethical research practices, or other potential breaches of research integrity.

A reviewer should not independently investigate or accuse an author of misconduct in the comments provided to the author. Suspected concerns should instead be communicated confidentially to the responsible editor, together with sufficient information to allow appropriate editorial assessment.

The journal is responsible for determining whether further inquiry or action is warranted.

Use of Artificial Intelligence by Reviewers

Peer-review materials are confidential. Reviewers must therefore exercise particular caution when using generative artificial intelligence, large language models, external AI assistants, automated manuscript-analysis services, or similar third-party systems.

Reviewers must not upload or otherwise transmit a confidential manuscript, manuscript excerpts, unpublished data, supplementary material, identifiable author information, or confidential editorial correspondence to publicly accessible or external generative-AI systems when doing so could disclose the manuscript or compromise confidentiality, privacy, intellectual property, or data protection obligations.

A reviewer remains personally accountable for the intellectual content, accuracy, reasoning, fairness, and integrity of the submitted review. An automated system cannot assume responsibility for a peer-review recommendation or replace the reviewer's independent scholarly judgment.

If the journal expressly authorizes a particular technological tool within its controlled review environment, its use should remain subject to the journal's confidentiality, data-protection, and editorial requirements.

Preparing the Review Report

A useful reviewer report should be clear, organized, specific, and constructive. Where possible, reviewers should distinguish between concerns that materially affect the reliability or publishability of the manuscript and suggestions intended primarily to strengthen presentation.

A review may address:

1. the overall scholarly contribution and relevance of the manuscript;

2. major methodological, conceptual, analytical, or ethical concerns;

3. specific revisions required to address those concerns;

4. minor issues affecting clarity, reporting, organization, or interpretation; and

5. confidential comments to the editor, where necessary.

Comments intended for authors should be written professionally and should contain enough explanation to enable authors to understand and respond meaningfully to the concerns raised.

Editorial Recommendations

After completing the assessment, reviewers may provide an editorial recommendation in accordance with the options made available by the journal's manuscript-management system, such as acceptance, revision, or rejection.

A recommendation should be consistent with the substance of the written review. Reviewers should provide sufficient reasoning to enable the editor to understand the basis of their assessment.

Reviewer recommendations are advisory. The final decision may differ from an individual reviewer's recommendation because editors must consider the manuscript as a whole, multiple reviewer reports, author responses, ethical considerations, journal scope, and other relevant editorial factors.

Professional and Respectful Conduct

JRAIE expects peer-review communication to remain professional, respectful, and focused on scholarly evaluation.

Reviewers should critique arguments, evidence, methodology, interpretation, and presentation rather than authors personally. Comments that are insulting, discriminatory, threatening, defamatory, or otherwise inappropriate may be removed from a report and may result in the reviewer no longer being invited to participate in the journal's peer-review process.

Differences in theoretical position, methodological preference, disciplinary tradition, or interpretation should be addressed through reasoned academic argument rather than personal judgment.

Timeliness and Withdrawal from Review

Reviewers should submit their reports within the review period communicated by the journal. If additional time is required, the reviewer should contact the editorial office as early as possible.

If a reviewer becomes unable to complete an accepted review, the journal should be informed promptly so that another reviewer may be appointed where necessary.

Reviewers should not provide a superficial evaluation merely to meet a deadline. A careful and academically meaningful assessment is preferable to an inadequately considered report.

Revised Manuscripts

A reviewer may be invited to assess a revised version of a manuscript. When reviewing a revision, the reviewer should consider whether the authors have adequately addressed the substantive concerns raised during the previous round of review.

Authors are not necessarily required to accept every recommendation. Where authors provide a reasoned scholarly justification for not implementing a suggested change, reviewers should evaluate that explanation objectively.

New major requirements should generally not be introduced at a later review stage unless they arise from the revision itself or concern an important issue that was previously overlooked.

Reviewer Recognition and Anonymity

Because JRAIE operates a double-blind peer-review system, reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors as part of the standard review process.

The journal may acknowledge the general contribution of its reviewer community or provide confirmation of completed review activity where appropriate, provided that doing so does not reveal confidential manuscript information or compromise the anonymity of individual peer-review assignments.

Reviewers must not publicly identify themselves as the reviewer of a specific manuscript unless disclosure is formally permitted under an applicable journal policy and all relevant confidentiality considerations have been resolved.

Post-Review Responsibilities

The ethical responsibilities associated with peer review do not end when a report is submitted.

Reviewers must continue to protect confidential information acquired during the review process. If a reviewer later becomes aware of a significant error, undisclosed conflict, research-integrity concern, or other information that could materially affect the editorial evaluation of the manuscript, the reviewer should communicate the matter confidentially to the editorial office.

Commitment to Ethical Peer Review

JRAIE seeks to maintain a peer-review process characterized by independence, confidentiality, scholarly competence, impartiality, transparency of procedure, and responsible editorial oversight.

Reviewers make an important contribution to the reliability of the scholarly record. By accepting a review assignment, reviewers are expected to conduct their assessment in good faith, exercise independent academic judgment, respect the rights and confidentiality of authors, disclose relevant conflicts of interest, and provide constructive evaluations that support responsible scholarly communication.

The journal's reviewer practices are informed by recognized principles of publication ethics and are intended to support a fair, credible, and academically rigorous editorial process.