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AJEV Reviewer Guidelines

The American Journal of Enology and Viticulture (AJEV) employs a single-blind peer review process, whereby the authors of submitted text-based or video-based contributions are known to the reviewers, but the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors. Peer review, conducted by experts in the field of a submitted contribution, serves as a quality control process and ensures the credibility of AJEV by detecting potential flaws, errors, or unwarranted claims.

Upon completion of all reviews, the Associate Editor who assigned you to review the work and the Managing Editor will evaluate the input from all reviewers and correspond with the authors. All reviewers are blind carbon copied (BCC’ed) to the decision notification letter that is sent to the authors. All reviewers of a contribution will be able to see the reviews included in the decision notification letter. Reviewers will remain anonymous to the authors and to the other reviewers in the entire process.

AJEV reviewers are acknowledged each year and listed by name, but not by contribution reviewed, on the AJEV website. Reviewer certificates are emailed every January to individuals who completed at least one review during the prior calendar year.

The purpose of AJEV’s peer review process is twofold:

  1. To act as a filter to ensure that each contribution published by AJEV adheres to the journal’s standards of scientific rigor and language.
  2. To act as a mechanism to provide constructive feedback that helps authors improve the clarity and quality of their contribution.

Expectations for reviewer integrity and professionalism:

  • Adhere to the highest ethical standards of review; refer to the COPE ethical guidelines for peer reviewers.
  • Maintain full confidentiality of contributions that are reviewed. Do not contact the authors or share the manuscript with anybody (i.e., both other individuals and external servers) without first asking permission of the Managing Editor. Sharing any information submitted by authors with other people or servers constitutes a violation of confidentiality. It may undermine the peer review process and jeopardize the intellectual property of AJEV authors.
  • Use generative artificial intelligence (AI) software tools (a.k.a. large language models) with discernment. While AJEV does not prohibit the use of AI tools in peer review, AI does not absolve reviewers from a critical assessment of a contribution. Refer to the best-practice information for responsible use of AI by HighWire Press.
    • Do not upload any part of any contribution to external servers when using AI software tools to assist in the review process.
    • If you used an AI tool during the review process, you must confirm the validity and accuracy of all assertions made by the AI tool.
  • Before beginning your review, consult the AJEV Guide for Authors for details regarding the types, content, and format of written manuscripts or videos.

Evaluate submissions on the following criteria:

  • The scientific and technical rigor, quality, novelty, and presentation of the work as indicated on the review form that appears on AJEV Editorial Manager. Only contributions that meet AJEV standards of scientific rigor and language should be accepted for publication. Unless they generate new hypotheses or present other new information or novel insights, contributions that are largely descriptive or confirmatory should be rejected.
  • Rate the originality, contribution to the field, depth of research, technical quality, and clarity of presentation as either excellent, good, acceptable, or poor/weak.
  • Focus critique on whether the study design, analyses, and evidence support the authors’ claims, even when results challenge prevailing assumptions.
  • Carefully check all figure captions and table headers to confirm that they are entirely self-explanatory and stand-alone from the manuscript text and other figures or tables in the contribution.
    • If any figure caption or table header is not self-explanatory, point this out in your comments to the authors. This is a common area of improvement for many manuscripts, and authors need guidance.

Writing the review:

  • Your review should enable authors to clearly understand the correspondence between each review comment and the portion of the submission to which it refers. For text-based contributions, refer to the line number(s) of the text in the manuscript that is associated with each comment, and for video-based contributions, refer to the time point in the video that is associated with each comment (e.g., Hr:Min:Sec format, 00:07:34).
  • If a technical aspect of the work (e.g., specialized statistical methods) falls outside your primary expertise, review comments should be framed as requests for clarification. Note any uncertainty so the Editor can weigh your input and, if needed, seek additional review.
  • While it is acceptable for a reviewer to occasionally suggest additional references for the authors’ consideration, refrain from asking authors to cite your own contributions, unless it is clearly justified.
  • Disclose in your review if there is a financial or other conflict of interest between your work and that of the authors. Refer to the AJEV Guide for Authors for details about conflicts of interest.
  • Any use of AI in the review process must be disclosed and must include information about the tool (i.e., name, version, provider) and how it was used.
  • Record all feedback in the comments section of the review form that appears on AJEV Editorial Manager.
    • Although you may attach additional files (e.g., Word or PDF) with your review, AJEV strongly encourages the use of the “Comments to Author” form in AJEV Editorial Manager to input all review comments. If you do attach additional files to a review, it is your responsibility to ensure that such files have been de-identified so that your identity remains anonymous to the authors.
  • Regardless of the decision you reach after reviewing a contribution (accept, revise, reject with or without option to resubmit), justify your decision and cite all of your reasons clearly. If you believe the contribution might be more suitable for another publication than AJEV, suggest this to the authors.