Reviewer Guide

Peer Review Policy & Reviewer Instructions

Reviewer Guidelines

Innovation Midwifery and Child Health Practice (IMCHP) is committed to rigorous, fair, confidential, and ethically responsible double-blind peer review. Reviewers contribute directly to the scientific reliability, methodological quality, clinical relevance, transparency, and scholarly value of manuscripts considered for publication.

1. Purpose of Peer Review

Peer review at IMCHP is intended to determine whether a manuscript provides a credible and meaningful contribution to midwifery, maternal health, pregnancy and childbirth, postpartum care, newborn and infant health, perinatal outcomes, reproductive health, maternal–newborn health services, nursing, health education, digital health, or related interdisciplinary health sciences.

  • Assess scientific originality and contribution to the field.
  • Evaluate methodological rigor, transparency, and reproducibility.
  • Assess whether conclusions are supported by the reported evidence.
  • Identify ethical, reporting, statistical, or interpretive concerns.
  • Provide constructive recommendations that help authors improve the manuscript.
  • Provide the Editor with an independent recommendation based on scholarly merit.

2. Double-Blind Peer Review

IMCHP applies a double-blind peer-review process. Reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors, and author identities are withheld from reviewers during the review process wherever reasonably possible. Reviewers should not attempt to identify authors through web searches, institutional contacts, social media, citation patterns, document metadata, or other means.

If a reviewer believes that an author's identity has become apparent and that this knowledge could affect impartiality, the reviewer should inform the Editor and, where appropriate, decline the review.

3. Before Accepting a Review Invitation

Reviewers should accept an invitation only when they can provide an independent and competent assessment within the deadline specified by the journal.

  • Expertise: Accept only if the manuscript falls sufficiently within your subject and/or methodological expertise.
  • Availability: Accept only if you can complete the review within the deadline stated in the invitation or OJS.
  • Conflict of Interest: Disclose any financial, professional, institutional, personal, collaborative, competitive, or other relationship that could reasonably affect impartiality.
  • Independence: Do not accept a review if you have substantially contributed to the work, recently collaborated with an identifiable author, or have another relationship that compromises independent evaluation.
  • Competence Boundary: If only part of the manuscript is within your expertise, notify the Editor and identify which aspects you can assess confidently.

4. Reviewer Ethics and Responsibilities

  • Confidentiality: Treat the manuscript, supplementary files, data, review correspondence, and editorial information as confidential.
  • No Appropriation: Do not use unpublished ideas, methods, data, figures, instruments, or findings obtained through peer review for personal, academic, commercial, or competitive advantage.
  • Objectivity: Evaluate the work on scientific and scholarly merit, not on nationality, institutional prestige, gender, seniority, personal beliefs, or other irrelevant characteristics.
  • Professional Conduct: Comments must be respectful, specific, evidence-based, and directed toward the manuscript rather than the authors.
  • Citation Ethics: Do not request unnecessary citations to your own work, the journal, or particular authors merely to increase citation counts.
  • Suspected Misconduct: Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, unethical research, duplicate publication, image/data manipulation, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, or other integrity concerns confidentially to the Editor.
  • No Direct Investigation: Do not contact authors, participants, institutions, ethics committees, or third parties to investigate a concern. Report the concern to the Editor.
Confidentiality and Generative AI

Reviewers must not upload a confidential manuscript, supplementary file, unpublished data, figure, table, or substantial manuscript excerpt to a public generative AI system or other external service when doing so could disclose confidential material or violate author rights. Reviewers remain personally responsible for the accuracy, confidentiality, originality, and professional integrity of the review report. Any permitted use of AI-assisted tools must comply with the journal's current Generative AI Policy and preserve manuscript confidentiality.

5. Core Evaluation Criteria

Reviewers should consider the manuscript as a whole before evaluating individual sections. The following criteria apply across article types:

Criterion Reviewer Questions
Scope & Relevance Does the manuscript clearly fit IMCHP's aims and scope and address a relevant problem in maternal–infant or related health sciences?
Originality & Contribution Does the study advance knowledge, theory, practice, methodology, policy, or evidence rather than merely replicate well-established findings without justification?
Methodological Rigor Is the design appropriate? Are sampling, measurement, data collection, analysis, and quality-control procedures adequately described and justified?
Research Ethics Are ethics approval, informed consent, confidentiality, participant protection, registration, and other ethical requirements appropriately reported?
Results & Interpretation Are findings reported transparently? Are effect estimates and uncertainty reported where appropriate? Are interpretations proportionate to the evidence?
Reporting Quality Does the manuscript follow an appropriate reporting guideline and provide enough information for critical appraisal and reproducibility?
Presentation Are title, abstract, tables, figures, terminology, references, and overall writing clear, internally consistent, and professionally presented?

6. Section-by-Section Review for Quantitative and Model-Based Research

For quantitative, hypothesis-driven, regression, mediation, moderation, SEM, PLS-SEM, predictive, and related model-based manuscripts, reviewers should evaluate the following IMCHP structure.

Title & Structured Abstract
  • Does the title accurately represent the study without unsupported causal language?
  • Does the abstract accurately summarize Background, Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion?
  • Are the sample, primary variables, analytical method, principal findings, and conclusion internally consistent with the main manuscript?
1. Introduction
  • Is the research problem clearly established and scientifically important?
  • Is current evidence summarized accurately without becoming an excessive literature review?
  • Is a genuine theoretical, empirical, methodological, clinical, or contextual gap identified?
  • Are novelty, contribution, and research objective clearly stated?
2. Literature Review and Hypothesis Development
  • Theoretical Foundation: Is the selected theory explained and meaningfully connected to the research model?
  • Construct Conceptualization: Are constructs clearly defined and conceptually distinct?
  • Empirical Evidence: Is prior research critically synthesized rather than presented as an author-by-author list?
  • Research Gap: Does the review establish what remains unresolved?
  • Hypotheses: Does each hypothesis follow from theoretical reasoning and relevant evidence?
  • Mediation/Moderation: Are indirect and conditional mechanisms theoretically justified rather than added only for statistical complexity?
  • Conceptual Model: Do all paths/arrows correspond to relationships justified in the text?
3. Innovation Methods

The heading Innovation Methods represents IMCHP's emphasis on rigorous and transparent methodology; it does not require authors to invent a new statistical method.

  • Are study design, setting, study period, population, eligibility criteria, and recruitment clearly reported?
  • Is the sampling method appropriate and is sample size/power adequately justified?
  • Are independent variables, outcomes, mediators, moderators, covariates, and controls operationally defined?
  • Are measurement instruments valid, reliable, appropriately adapted, and adequately referenced?
  • Are translation/back-translation and cultural adaptation reported where relevant?
  • Are missing data, outliers, assumptions, multicollinearity, non-response, and common-method concerns appropriately addressed?
  • Is the analytical method appropriate to the study objective and data structure?
  • For SEM/PLS-SEM, are measurement and structural model criteria appropriate and transparently reported?
  • Are software, analytical settings, confidence intervals, robustness procedures, and relevant diagnostics reported?
  • Are ethics approval, informed consent, and registration described where applicable?
4. Results

IMCHP permits an integrated Results-and-Discussion approach within Section 4. Reviewers should assess both accurate reporting of findings and the quality of their interpretation.

  • Are participant flow and sample characteristics transparently reported?
  • Are descriptive and preliminary analyses appropriate?
  • Are reliability and validity results complete where relevant?
  • Are hypothesis tests reported consistently with the hypotheses stated in Section 2?
  • Are effect sizes, confidence intervals, model fit/performance, explanatory power, and predictive measures reported where appropriate?
  • Are mediation/moderation results interpreted as mechanisms or conditions rather than only as significance tests?
  • Does the integrated discussion compare findings critically with prior evidence and theory?
  • Are non-significant or contradictory results treated scientifically rather than hidden or overexplained?
  • Are clinical, professional, theoretical, educational, or policy implications proportionate to the evidence?
  • Are limitations and contextual boundaries explicitly acknowledged?
5. Conclusion
  • Does the conclusion directly answer the study objective?
  • Is it supported by the results without adding new evidence or citations?
  • Does it avoid unsupported causal statements and overly broad recommendations?
  • Are theoretical, clinical, professional, or policy implications stated proportionately?

7. Additional Review Criteria for Health and Clinical Research

  • Check whether participant risks and protections are appropriate to the study population, especially for pregnant participants, postpartum women, neonates, infants, children, and other vulnerable groups.
  • Check consistency between ethics approval, study dates, recruitment, informed consent, and the described protocol.
  • For clinical trials, verify that registration information is reported where applicable and that outcomes are described consistently.
  • For clinical or diagnostic research, assess whether clinically meaningful measures are reported in addition to statistical significance.
  • Check whether adverse events, harms, missing outcomes, exclusions, and attrition are reported where relevant.
  • Ensure that identifiable case information or clinical images have appropriate consent for publication.
  • Consider whether conclusions could create inappropriate clinical recommendations unsupported by the design or evidence.

8. Reporting Guidelines by Study Design

Reviewers should use the relevant reporting guideline as a transparency aid. Reporting checklists help assess completeness of reporting; they should not be used mechanically as substitutes for scientific judgment.

Study Type Guideline
Randomized trials CONSORT and relevant extensions
Observational studies STROBE and relevant extensions
Systematic reviews / meta-analyses PRISMA
Scoping reviews PRISMA-ScR
Study protocols SPIRIT / PRISMA-P, as applicable
Qualitative research COREQ / SRQR
Case reports CARE
Diagnostic accuracy studies STARD
Prediction model studies TRIPOD
Quality-improvement studies SQUIRE
Animal pre-clinical studies ARRIVE

9. Statistical and Analytical Review

  • Evaluate whether the analytical method matches the research question, study design, measurement level, sample structure, and data characteristics.
  • Check whether assumptions, missing data, outliers, repeated observations, clustering, multiple testing, and confounding are appropriately handled where relevant.
  • Prefer interpretation based on estimates, effect sizes, uncertainty, confidence intervals, clinical importance, and model performance rather than p-values alone.
  • For latent-variable models, examine indicator performance, reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, structural relationships, explanatory power, predictive assessment, and relevant diagnostics.
  • For mediation/moderation models, assess whether the theoretical mechanism is justified and whether indirect or interaction effects are analyzed and interpreted correctly.
  • Do not require a preferred statistical package or method solely because it is familiar to the reviewer; recommendations should be based on methodological appropriateness.

10. References and Citation Practice

  • Assess whether references are relevant, sufficiently current, and balanced with essential seminal literature.
  • Identify important omissions only when they materially affect scientific interpretation.
  • Do not request citation of unrelated articles or excessive citation of the reviewer's own publications.
  • Report suspected fabricated, unverifiable, systematically inappropriate, or citation-manipulated references to the Editor.
  • Minor APA 7 formatting issues should normally be treated as editorial corrections rather than grounds for rejection.

11. How to Structure the Review Report

A. Brief Overall Assessment

Summarize the study objective, principal contribution, and overall scientific assessment in a short paragraph. Do not simply repeat the abstract.

B. Major Comments

Address issues that materially affect validity, interpretation, reproducibility, ethics, theory, design, analysis, or conclusions. Number each major comment separately.

C. Minor Comments

Address clarity, terminology, table/figure presentation, minor reference issues, typographical problems, or localized wording improvements.

D. Confidential Comments to the Editor

Use the confidential field for concerns that should not be communicated directly to authors, including suspected misconduct, undisclosed conflicts, serious ethics concerns, or reasons underlying the editorial recommendation. Comments to authors and confidential comments to the Editor should not contradict each other without explanation.

12. Providing Constructive and Actionable Feedback

  • Be specific: identify the relevant section, table, figure, analysis, or claim.
  • Explain why an issue matters scientifically.
  • Where possible, suggest a realistic route to correction without rewriting the manuscript for the authors.
  • Distinguish essential changes from optional improvements.
  • Avoid vague judgments such as "poor," "weak," or "not novel" without explanation.
  • Do not require authors to obtain new data solely to satisfy reviewer curiosity unless the missing evidence is necessary to support the manuscript's central conclusions.
Example of an Actionable Comment

Instead of writing "The methods are weak," explain the specific issue: "Section 3.2 does not explain how the final sample size was determined. Please provide the sample-size or power rationale appropriate to the primary analysis and clarify whether exclusions occurred before or after data screening."

13. Editorial Recommendation

The recommendation should follow from the scientific assessment. Reviewers advise the Editor; the final publication decision remains the responsibility of the editorial team.

Recommendation General Interpretation
Accept Scientifically sound and publication-ready apart from negligible editorial corrections.
Minor Revision Core design and conclusions are sound; limited revisions are needed for clarity, reporting, or presentation.
Major Revision Potentially publishable, but substantial issues in analysis, theory, methods, reporting, or interpretation must be resolved.
Reject Fundamental problems cannot reasonably be corrected through revision, the evidence does not support the central claims, major ethical/integrity concerns exist, or the manuscript is outside scope.

14. Reviewing a Revised Manuscript

  • Read the authors' point-by-point response together with the revised manuscript.
  • Determine whether major concerns were substantively addressed rather than only acknowledged.
  • Avoid introducing entirely new major requirements unless they arise from the revision or were genuinely overlooked and are essential to validity.
  • Where a concern remains unresolved, explain precisely why the response is inadequate.
  • Base the second-round recommendation on the revised manuscript, not on whether authors followed every stylistic preference of the reviewer.

15. Reviewer Resources

Editorial Quality and Indexing Readiness

These Reviewer Guidelines are designed to make the IMCHP peer-review process transparent, consistent, ethically governed, and focused on academic contribution, methodological quality, conformity with journal scope, and readability. Such elements support journal quality and indexing readiness. However, inclusion in Scopus or another indexing service is determined independently by the relevant evaluation body and cannot be guaranteed by the existence of reviewer guidelines alone.

16. Final Notes

Reviewers should decline an invitation when adequate expertise, independence, confidentiality, or timely completion cannot be ensured. Constructive and evidence-based peer review is essential to maintaining IMCHP's scientific standards and to improving the reliability and usefulness of the literature published in maternal, newborn, infant, midwifery, and related health sciences.

Questions concerning a review assignment should be directed to the editorial office through the official IMCHP journal website or the contact information provided in the reviewer invitation.

Thank you for your professional and ethical service to Innovation Midwifery and Child Health Practice (IMCHP).