Peer Reviews

Part A — Terms for everyone

A1. About these terms

A1.1 These terms are an agreement between you and Metascience Systems Ltd, trading as Peer Reviews (“we”, “us”, “our”). We are a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17376934. Our registered office is 15 Bedford Court, Grena Road, Richmond, TW9 1XT, United Kingdom. Contact us at hello@peer-reviews.co.uk.

A1.2 These terms have five parts. Part A applies to everyone who uses peer-reviews.co.uk or its subdomains (“the website”). The other parts depend on what you do:

  • Part B if you read or reuse published work
  • Part C if you submit a manuscript
  • Part D if you are named as an author of a manuscript
  • Part E if we invite you to review, or you review for us

Read every part that applies to you. Where a part for your role conflicts with Part A, the part for your role applies.

A1.3 Our Privacy Notice explains how we use personal data. Our Editorial Policy explains how we run peer review. It guides our decisions but isn’t part of this agreement, and editorial decisions are ours to make.

A1.4 Professional use only. We offer our services to people acting for their profession, trade or business, or on behalf of an organisation. We don’t offer them to consumers. If you submit a manuscript or review for us, you confirm you are acting in a professional capacity.

A1.5 You must be 18 or over to submit a manuscript, review for us or enter into any agreement with us.

A1.6 Accepting these terms. By using the website, you accept Parts A and B. When you submit a manuscript or accept an invitation to review, you accept the parts that apply to you by ticking the box on our form. You agree that ticking that box is your signature for every purpose, including the transfer of copyright and waiver of moral rights in Part E.

A1.7 This is version 2026-10-25 of these terms.

A2. Definitions

In these terms:

  • AI tool means any software that uses machine learning to generate, rewrite, translate, summarise or analyse text or other content, including chatbots and large language models. Basic word-processing tools, such as spelling and grammar checks, are not AI tools. Features that draft, rewrite or summarise text are.
  • Co-author means anyone named as an author of a manuscript other than the corresponding author.
  • Corresponding author means the person who submits a manuscript to us.
  • Editor means the person who makes editorial decisions for us.
  • Fee means the charge for reviewing a manuscript under Part C.
  • Manuscript means the work submitted to us for review, including supporting files and all the information submitted with it.
  • Published work means a manuscript and its reviews once we have published them on the website.
  • Review means everything a reviewer submits about a manuscript, including scores, comments for the authors and confidential comments for the editor.
  • Working day means Monday to Friday, except public holidays in England.

A3. Using our website

A3.1 You may use the website only lawfully. You must not:

  • break the law or infringe anyone’s rights
  • upload anything containing viruses or other harmful code
  • interfere with, overload or disrupt the website, or get around its security or access controls
  • use a link or page not meant for you. Personal links in our emails are for the person they were sent to
  • pretend to be someone else, or misrepresent your connection with anyone

A3.2 Automated access. You must not use automated means, such as scraping, crawling or harvesting, to access, copy or extract content or data from the website in bulk. This doesn’t apply to search engines indexing pages for search results, or to anything a licence shown on a work allows.

A3.3 Text and data mining. We reserve all rights to text and data mining of the website, including to train AI models, to the fullest extent the law allows. This includes the reservation of rights under Article 4(3) of EU Directive 2019/790 and any similar law. It doesn’t limit what a licence shown on a work allows.

A3.4 We may change, suspend or withdraw all or part of the website at any time. We don’t promise it will always be available or free of errors.

A3.5 We are not responsible for other websites we link to.

A4. Intellectual property and licences

A4.1 Published articles. The authors keep the copyright. Unless the article’s page says otherwise, each published article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0).

A4.2 Published reviews. We own the reviews, including their scores. Unless the review’s page says otherwise, each published review is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). Any commercial use of a review needs our written permission.

A4.3 Everything else. All other content on the website belongs to us or our licensors, and all rights are reserved. That includes our text, design and logos, our review criteria and scoring system, and the collection of reviews and scores as a database. You may view and print pages for your own use, and quote from them with attribution as the law allows.

A4.4 You must not use the Peer Reviews name or logo in a way that suggests we endorse you, your work or your organisation, except as Part C allows.

A5. Disclaimers

A5.1 Reviews are the opinions of individual reviewers at the time they wrote them. They are not our opinions. Scores are reviewers’ judgements against our criteria. They are not a certification or an endorsement, and they don’t guarantee that any work is correct, safe or fit for any purpose.

A5.2 We publish work as the authors submitted it. We don’t edit it or verify its contents. Nothing on the website is professional, technical, medical, legal or financial advice. Don’t rely on published work or reviews without checking them yourself.

A5.3 We accept no responsibility to anyone who relies on a review or on published work. That includes organisations, and their customers, who rely on a review of technical work.

A5.4 To the fullest extent the law allows, we provide the website and its content without any warranty or condition, express or implied.

A6. Illegal content, AI checks and complaints

A6.1 You must not submit, upload or share anything illegal through the website or our services, or anything that encourages or helps anyone to break the law.

A6.2 How we protect users from illegal content. Our AI tools check every manuscript, and our editor approves it, before it goes to reviewers. Reviews are checked before authors receive them. Nothing is published until our editor approves it. If we find illegal content, we remove it. We report child sexual abuse material to the National Crime Agency as the law requires.

A6.3 Our use of AI checks. We use AI tools to check every manuscript and review for quality issues, conflicts of interest and possible illegal or harmful content, and to help identify suitable reviewers. The tools report to our editor, who decides what happens. They never publish, remove or reject anything, or make any other decision, on their own.

A6.4 Reporting a concern. Email hello@peer-reviews.co.uk. You can complain to us about:

  • content you think is illegal or breaks these terms
  • a decision to remove or restrict your content, or to take action against you
  • how we comply with our online safety duties
  • our use of AI checks

A6.5 What we do. We review the content you report and decide what to do. If it is illegal or breaks these terms, we remove it from public view promptly. We tell you what we have decided, unless the law prevents us.

A6.6 Appeals. If we remove or restrict your content, or decide against your complaint, you can ask us by email to reconsider, explaining why. We will reconsider promptly. If we decide we were wrong, we will restore the content.

A6.7 We may disregard a complaint that repeats one we have already decided without raising anything new, or that is abusive. We record each such decision.

A6.8 If you think we have used AI checks in a way these terms don’t describe, you can complain to us. You may also have the right to bring a claim against us for breach of contract.

A6.9 Our Privacy Notice explains how to complain about our use of personal data.

A7. Our right to refuse and remove

A7.1 We may refuse any submission, invitation, review or payment, decline to review or publish anything, remove, restrict or redact any content, or stop dealing with anyone, if we reasonably consider that:

  • someone has broken these terms
  • content is unlawful, or could expose us or anyone else to a legal claim
  • there is research misconduct, dishonesty or abusive behaviour
  • dealing with someone would breach sanctions (A7.2)
  • content could help someone cause serious harm, for example detailed instructions for making weapons, explosives, dangerous pathogens or toxins
  • the work is outside our scope (A7.3)

We will usually explain why, unless the law, safety or confidentiality prevents it.

A7.2 Sanctions. We don’t deal with anyone named on a sanctions list that applies to us, including the UK sanctions list, or with anyone owned or controlled by such a person or acting for them. Nor do we deal with anyone in a way that would breach sanctions. You confirm that none of this applies to you or anyone you act for.

A7.3 Scope. We review finished work that is authored by identifiable, accountable people, has a stated purpose, rests on evidence or methods an independent expert can check, and is submitted as a complete, fixed version. We don’t review promotional material, social media content, opinion without supporting evidence, or incomplete work.

A7.4 We may keep a record of the people and organisations we have refused to deal with, and why.

A8. Our liability

A8.1 Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else the law doesn’t allow us to limit or exclude.

A8.2 Subject to A8.1, we are not liable, however it arises and including through negligence, for:

  • loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, opportunity, goodwill or reputation
  • loss of a publication, funding or employment opportunity
  • loss or corruption of data
  • any indirect or consequential loss

A8.3 Website users and readers. Subject to A8.1, and to the fullest extent the law allows, we have no liability to you arising from your use of the website or your reliance on its content.

A8.4 Our liability to authors is limited by C14, and to reviewers by E10.

A9. Changes to these terms

A9.1 We may change these terms at any time by publishing a new version.

A9.2 A new version applies to manuscripts submitted, and invitations accepted, after it takes effect. Manuscripts and reviews already in progress stay under the version you accepted, unless you accept the new version, for example when you choose publication (C8.5).

A9.3 For use of the website, a new version applies from the day we publish it.

A9.4 We will only contact you about a change if the law requires it.

A10. General

A10.1 Events beyond our control. We are not responsible for any delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

A10.2 Transfer. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation, including if all or part of our business is sold or reorganised. You may not transfer yours without our written agreement.

A10.3 Other people’s rights. Only you and we have rights under these terms, except that reviewers may enforce C8.4. Otherwise, no one else may enforce these terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

A10.4 Entire agreement. These terms, in the version you accepted, are the whole agreement between you and us about their subject. You haven’t relied on any statement that isn’t in them. This doesn’t limit liability for fraud.

A10.5 If a court finds any part of these terms invalid, the rest stays in force.

A10.6 If we delay enforcing these terms, we can still enforce them later.

A10.7 Notices. Notices under these terms are given by email: to us at hello@peer-reviews.co.uk, and to you at the email address you gave us. A notice is treated as received on the next working day after it is sent.

A10.8 Disputes. If you have a dispute with us, email us first, and we will both try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days. If that fails, either of us may propose mediation, but neither of us has to agree to it. Nothing in this clause stops either of us going to court for urgent relief or to recover unpaid money.

A10.9 Law and courts. These terms, and any dispute about them, are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

A10.10 If these terms are translated, the English version prevails.

Part B — Readers

B1 Anyone may read published work on the website free of charge.

B2 Reusing published work. You may reuse published work under the licence shown on its page:

  • Articles (CC BY 4.0): for any purpose, including commercial use, provided you credit the work properly.
  • Reviews (CC BY-NC 4.0): for non-commercial purposes only, provided you credit the work properly. Any commercial use, including commercial text and data mining or AI training, needs our written permission. Ask at hello@peer-reviews.co.uk.

B3 Crediting work. Give the authors’ names (or the reviewer’s name, or “anonymous reviewer”), the title, “Peer Reviews”, the DOI or a link, and the licence. Don’t suggest that we, the authors or the reviewers endorse you or your use.

B4 Reading reviews. Each review is one expert’s view of the work at the time they wrote it, scored against our published criteria. Reviewers often disagree, and scores aren’t directly comparable between fields. Read the reviews in full rather than relying on scores alone. A5 applies.

B5 Corrections and retractions. We mark corrections and retractions on the work’s page. Check the page for the current status of a work before relying on it or citing it.

B6 To report a concern about published work, see A6.4.

Part C — Authors

C1. Who can submit

C1.1 The corresponding author must be an individual aged 18 or over, acting in a professional capacity, who submits the manuscript and accepts these terms.

C1.2 Submitting for an organisation. Organisations, including companies, may submit work, but an individual must act as corresponding author. If you submit for an organisation, you confirm that you have its authority, and these terms bind both you and it. If you didn’t have that authority, you are personally responsible for the fee and for the promises in C5.

C1.3 You submit for all the authors. Part D explains what that means for them.

C1.4 Accountable authors and AI. Every author must be a person, or an organisation, that can take responsibility for the work. AI tools can’t be listed as authors. You may use AI tools to prepare your manuscript, and whether you say so is up to you. But the authors are responsible for everything in the manuscript as if they had written it themselves.

C1.5 Your manuscript must be within our scope (A7.3). Our Editorial Policy gives further guidance.

C2. Our service

C2.1 For the fee, we:

  1. check your manuscript and decide whether to send it for review
  2. find independent expert reviewers
  3. obtain their reviews and send them to you
  4. if you choose publication and we agree, publish your manuscript with its reviews and register DOIs for them

C2.2 Number of reviews. We obtain up to three reviews, and at least two. If we can’t find at least two suitable reviewers, we decline the manuscript and refund the fee in full (C4.3).

C2.3 What a review contains. Each reviewer scores the work against our published criteria, with a written justification for each score, and may add comments. Reviews don’t recommend acceptance or rejection. There is one round of review. We don’t edit your manuscript: it is reviewed, and published if you choose, as you submitted it.

C2.4 Timing. We aim to deliver reviews promptly, but we don’t guarantee any timescale.

C2.5 Declining before review. We may decline to review a manuscript at any time before reviewers are invited, for any reason, including that it is outside our scope or doesn’t meet our requirements. If we do, we refund the fee in full (C4.3).

C2.6 We don’t promise that:

  • reviewers will agree with each other or with you
  • a review will find every error in the work
  • any journal, funder or other organisation will accept or rely on the reviews
  • published work will be indexed by any particular service

C3. Fee and payment

C3.1 The fee is £500 per manuscript, for every type of manuscript. It covers review and, if you choose it and we agree, publication. There are no other charges.

C3.2 Our prices exclude VAT. We are not currently registered for VAT. If we register, we will add VAT at the applicable rate to invoices issued after that.

C3.3 After you submit, we invoice you or your organisation, as you tell us at checkout. We start work once we receive a purchase order or payment.

C3.4 Invoices are due within 30 days of their date. Pay by bank transfer, in pounds sterling, without any deduction or set-off. You pay any bank charges.

C3.5 Late payment. If an invoice isn’t paid on time, we may charge interest and compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, and recover our reasonable costs of collection. We may pass unpaid invoices to a debt collection agency or take legal action. Until we are paid, we may pause work, withhold reviews and decline to publish.

C4. Withdrawal and refunds

C4.1 You can withdraw your manuscript at any time by emailing us.

C4.2 If you withdraw before we receive a purchase order or payment, we cancel the invoice and you owe nothing. After that, the full fee is payable and isn’t refunded, except under C4.3 or C4.4.

C4.3 We refund the fee in full, or cancel the invoice, if we decline your manuscript before review (C2.5) or can’t find at least two suitable reviewers (C2.2).

C4.4 Problems with a review. Tell us within 14 days of receiving your reviews if you believe a review:

  • contains a material error of fact or technical substance
  • doesn’t apply our criteria or reviewer guidelines
  • was written by a reviewer with an undeclared conflict of interest

Explain why. We will consider it and may, at our discretion, obtain a replacement review, withdraw the review, or refund some or all of the fee. Disagreeing with a reviewer’s opinion or score is not grounds for a replacement or refund.

C4.5 We give no other refunds, except where the law requires.

C5. Your promises

C5.1 You promise us, for yourself and for every author, that:

  1. the author list is complete and correct, every listed author agreed to be listed and to the submission, and you have authority to act for all of them
  2. the authors own the copyright in the manuscript, or have the right to grant the licence in C9. Where an employer, the Crown or anyone else owns it, you have their authority
  3. the work is the authors’ own and is not plagiarised
  4. the copyright hasn’t been transferred or exclusively licensed to another publisher
  5. any third-party material in it either may be published under CC BY 4.0, or you have identified it to us as excluded from that licence and have permission to publish it
  6. the work contains nothing defamatory, unlawful or obscene, and nothing that breaches confidence, privacy or anyone else’s rights
  7. its statements of fact are true and can be supported, and its statements of opinion are honestly held
  8. the research had every ethics approval and consent it needed, and you have declared them accurately
  9. it contains nothing that identifies a research participant, unless they consented and the ethics approval covers it
  10. any personal data in it was obtained lawfully, and may lawfully be shared with us, with reviewers and, if published, with the public
  11. all funding and competing interests are declared fully and accurately
  12. sharing it with reviewers in other countries, and publishing it, needs no export licence and doesn’t breach sanctions
  13. everything you tell us is true and complete

C5.2 Tell us promptly if any of these promises stops being true.

C6. How we handle your manuscript

C6.1 Confidentiality. We keep your manuscript confidential until it is published. We share it only with reviewers, our staff and contractors, and service providers that work for us, including our AI provider, as our Privacy Notice explains. Reviewers must keep it confidential (E4).

C6.2 AI checks. Our AI tools check every manuscript (A6.3). This is part of how our service works, so you can’t opt out. If your organisation or funder doesn’t allow unpublished work to be processed by AI tools, don’t submit.

C6.3 What reviewers see. Reviewers see your manuscript and supporting files, the author names and affiliations, and the funding and competing interests statements. They don’t see your phone number, the reviewers you suggested, or the people you asked us to exclude.

C6.4 Suggested and excluded reviewers. We choose reviewers independently, and may not use the people you suggest. We will not invite anyone you ask us to exclude.

C6.5 Integrity checks. We may check any manuscript for plagiarism, duplicate submission, image manipulation or other integrity problems, at any time.

C6.6 Review is not publication. Reviewing your manuscript privately does not publish it. Nothing becomes public unless you choose publication (C8).

C7. Your reviews

C7.1 We send you all the reviews together once they are complete. We don’t tell you who your reviewers are. If your work is published, signed reviews show the reviewer’s name.

C7.2 You must not try to identify or contact your reviewers.

C7.3 Sharing your reviews privately. We own the reviews. Whether or not your work is published, you may share the full reviews privately with journals, funders, employers and your institution, to help them assess your work. You may not publish the reviews, post them publicly, or share extracts that misrepresent them, except as C10 allows for published work.

C7.4 Reviewers’ confidential comments to the editor are never shared with you.

C8. Choosing publication

C8.1 After you receive your reviews, you choose on your author page whether to publish your manuscript with its reviews, or keep everything private. If you don’t choose within 90 days, your work stays private.

C8.2 Publishing is publication. Once published, your work is publicly and permanently available with a DOI. Some journals won’t consider work that has already been published. Check the policies of any journal you may want to submit to before you choose. That is your responsibility.

C8.3 Our decision. We may decline or delay publication for any reason we consider appropriate, including concerns about research integrity, legal risk, unlawful or hazardous content, an authorship dispute, an unpaid fee, or a breach of these terms.

C8.4 Publication of the reviews. By choosing publication after reading the reviews, you agree, for yourself and every author, that we may publish all the reviews in full alongside your work, subject to any redactions under C8.6. You also waive any claim against us or the reviewers arising from their publication. Reviewers may enforce this clause.

C8.5 When you choose publication, you confirm that every author agrees to it, and you accept the licence in C9 under the version of these terms in force at that time. We record what you confirmed and when.

C8.6 Redactions. Before publishing, we may remove from a review any statement about people other than the authors, any allegation of misconduct, any personal information, and anything we consider unlawful, offensive or risky. We don’t otherwise edit reviews.

C8.7 What we publish. If your work is published, we make public:

  • the manuscript and supporting files, with the title, abstract, subject and article type
  • author names, affiliations and contribution roles
  • ORCID iDs that their owners have verified
  • the corresponding author’s name and email address
  • the funding and competing interests statements
  • the reviews and scores, with the reviewer’s name where they chose to sign

C9. Licence to publish

C9.1 When it applies. This licence takes effect only if you choose publication and we accept. If your work stays private, you grant nothing under this clause.

C9.2 Our licence. The authors keep their copyright. For all the authors, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to:

  • reproduce, publish, distribute, display, store, archive, format and convert the work, in any medium
  • register the work and its metadata with Crossref and other indexing and archiving services
  • sublicense these rights

We may transfer this licence to anyone who takes over our business or our publication of the work.

C9.3 Open licence. The published work is made available under CC BY 4.0. For all the authors, you grant that licence to everyone.

C9.4 It can’t be withdrawn. Creative Commons licences are irrevocable. Once your work is published, neither you nor any other author can require us to remove it, except as C11 allows.

C9.5 Any third-party material you identified under C5.1(5) is published only with the permission you obtained, and is marked as not covered by CC BY 4.0.

C10. Describing your review publicly

C10.1 If your work is published, you may say that it was reviewed by Peer Reviews, and cite its scores or quote its reviews, as long as you:

  • always link to the full published reviews on our website
  • quote accurately and in context, without choosing extracts that misrepresent the reviews
  • don’t suggest that we or the reviewers endorse, certify or approve the work, or any product, service or organisation
  • don’t use our logo without our written permission

C10.2 You may not describe or quote reviews of work that stays private in public.

C10.3 If we think a statement about a review is misleading, we may ask you to correct or withdraw it, and you must do so promptly. We may also publish a correction.

C11. Corrections, retractions and removal

C11.1 Corrections. Tell us about any error in published work. We may publish a correction notice. We never change published work without a notice.

C11.2 Retractions. We may retract published work or a review, or publish an expression of concern, because of misconduct, a serious error or a breach of these terms. Retracted work stays online, clearly marked, with its DOI.

C11.3 Removal. We remove published content only where the law requires it, or where we consider it necessary to avoid serious legal risk or harm. A removed item’s DOI then leads to a notice saying it was removed.

C11.4 Reconsideration. If you disagree with our decision to decline your manuscript, decline publication, or correct, retract or remove published work, you may ask us once, by email, to reconsider, explaining why. Our decision on reconsideration is final.

C12. Research integrity

C12.1 If a reviewer or anyone else raises a concern about possible misconduct, such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate submission, inappropriate authorship or a breach of research ethics, we will look into it. You must cooperate, including by providing any data or information we reasonably ask for.

C12.2 If a concern seems plausible, we raise it with the authors and, normally, refer it to the research integrity or ethics office at the authors’ institution, sharing what that office needs.

C12.3 While we look into a concern, we may pause review or publication. If we stop work because of an integrity concern, the fee isn’t refunded.

C13. Indemnity

C13.1 You, and any organisation you submit for, will indemnify us, meaning compensate us in full, against all claims, losses, damages, liabilities, costs and expenses arising from any breach or alleged breach of your promises in C5, or from the content of the manuscript. This includes reasonable legal fees, and any settlement we make on legal advice.

C13.2 We will tell you promptly about any such claim. We control its defence and settlement, and you will give us any help we reasonably ask for.

C14. Our liability to authors

C14.1 Subject to A8.1 and A8.2, our total liability for each manuscript, to you, any organisation you submit for and every other author, however it arises, is limited to the fee paid for that manuscript.

C14.2 We are not responsible for reviewers’ opinions, for errors in reviews, or for decisions anyone makes based on them.

Part D — Co-authors

D1 If you are named as an author. If you didn’t submit the manuscript yourself, the corresponding author submitted it for you. They have promised us that you agreed to the submission, to these terms and, if publication is chosen, to the licence in C9. If they didn’t have your agreement, your claim is against them, but please tell us at once.

D2 We email every co-author we have an address for when a manuscript is submitted. If you weren’t involved in the work, or don’t agree to its submission, contact us promptly at hello@peer-reviews.co.uk.

D3 Named without agreement. If you tell us you are not an author of the work, we will remove your name, correct any published record, and look into how it happened. That may include referring the matter to the authors’ institution under C12.

D4 Authorship disputes. If an author objects to the submission or to publication, we pause the manuscript until the authors resolve the dispute between themselves or through their institutions. We don’t decide authorship disputes. If a dispute isn’t resolved, the work stays private.

D5 The fee isn’t refunded because of an authorship dispute, except under C4.2.

D6 Your rights. You keep your copyright. Published work credits every author. You may share and describe the reviews of your work in the same way as the corresponding author (C7.3 and C10).

Part E — Reviewers

E1. Who can review

E1.1 Reviewers are individuals aged 18 or over who meet the reviewer criteria in our Editorial Policy, acting in a professional capacity.

E1.2 You review as an independent contractor, not as our employee, worker or agent. You decide how to do the work, within these terms.

E1.3 You are responsible for getting any permission your employer or anyone else requires for you to review for us or to accept payment, and you confirm you have it.

E1.4 If you register with us, keep your details accurate. We may decide not to invite you, limit how many reviews you do, or remove you from our register, at any time.

E2. Invitations

E2.1 An invitation tells you the manuscript’s title and abstract. Keep them confidential, even if you decline.

E2.2 By accepting an invitation, you agree to these terms for that review, and to submit your review within 14 days of our invitation, unless we agree a later date in writing.

E2.3 If we haven’t received your review by then, we may withdraw the invitation, and no fee is payable.

E2.4 The link in your invitation is personal to you. Don’t share it.

E2.5 If you decline, you may suggest other reviewers. Suggest only people you reasonably believe are suitable and have no conflict of interest, and give only their professional contact details.

E3. Conflicts of interest

E3.1 Before accepting, consider whether you have any actual or potential conflict of interest. For example, you may have a conflict if you:

  • have collaborated with any author in the past three years
  • work at the same institution as any author
  • have a financial interest in the work, or in a competing product or service
  • have a close personal relationship, or a rivalry, with any author

If a conflict could affect your impartiality, decline.

E3.2 Declare any conflict fully and truthfully on the review form. We never publish your declaration.

E4. Confidentiality

E4.1 The manuscript, its supporting files, the fact that it was submitted, and everything about the review are confidential until we publish them. Anything we don’t publish, including your confidential comments, stays confidential permanently.

E4.2 You must not:

  • share any of it with anyone, including colleagues or students, without our written permission
  • use the work, its ideas or its data for any purpose other than your review until it is published
  • contact the authors about the manuscript or your review
  • tell anyone that you reviewed the manuscript before it is published (except as E9.5 allows), or identify yourself in the text of your review

E4.3 Delete or destroy every copy of the manuscript and supporting files once you have submitted your review or declined the invitation.

E5. No AI tools

E5.1 You must not use any AI tool to write, draft, edit, translate, summarise or analyse your review or the manuscript. You must not enter or upload any part of the manuscript, its supporting files or your review into any AI tool. Basic word-processing tools, such as spelling and grammar checks, are allowed (A2).

E5.2 Your review must be entirely your own work. We check reviews, including with AI tools.

E6. Standards and conduct

E6.1 Follow our reviewer guidelines. Score every criterion, and justify each score with reasons and evidence.

E6.2 Comment on the work, not the people. Don’t include personal criticism or abusive, offensive or discriminatory language.

E6.3 Put any concern about misconduct, plagiarism or research ethics only in your confidential comments to the editor, never in the comments for the authors.

E6.4 Don’t make statements of fact about the authors or anyone else unless you know them to be true. Don’t include personal information about anyone.

E6.5 Your review must contain nothing defamatory, unlawful or infringing, and no one else’s confidential information.

E7. Signing your review

E7.1 You choose whether to sign your review. If you sign it and the work is published, your name appears with your review. If you don’t, your review is published anonymously.

E7.2 You can change your choice by emailing us at any time before publication.

E7.3 We never tell authors who reviewed their work. We won’t disclose an anonymous reviewer’s identity to anyone, except as the law requires.

E8. Payment

E8.1 We pay £100 for each review we accept as complete and meeting our guidelines.

E8.2 We pay within 30 days after we send the authors their reviews, by bank transfer. We pay in pounds sterling or, if you ask, the equivalent in your local currency at our bank’s exchange rate on the day we pay. You bear any transfer, conversion or receiving charges.

E8.3 Your fee doesn’t depend on whether the author pays us, whether the work is published, or what your review concludes.

E8.4 No fee, and no part of a fee, is payable for a review that:

  • we didn’t receive by the deadline in E2.2
  • is incomplete or doesn’t meet our guidelines
  • breaches any of E3 to E6, including an undeclared conflict of interest, plagiarism or use of an AI tool

If we find such a breach after paying you, you must repay the fee.

E8.5 Instead of payment, you can ask us to donate your fee to one of the charities listed on our website.

E8.6 Tax. You are responsible for any tax, national insurance or similar charges on your fees, wherever you are based. Our fees are paid gross. You will indemnify us against any such tax or charge claimed from us in respect of your fees.

E8.7 We can’t pay anyone where sanctions or other laws prevent it (A7.2).

E9. Rights in your review

E9.1 You transfer your rights to us. You assign to us, with full title guarantee, all copyright and all other rights in your review, including its scores and your confidential comments, throughout the world, for the full term of those rights and any renewals or extensions. As your review doesn’t yet exist when you accept an invitation, this is an assignment of future copyright, which belongs to us as soon as the review is created.

E9.2 Moral rights. You unconditionally and irrevocably waive all moral rights in your review, including the right to be identified as its author and the right to object to derogatory treatment of it, and you agree not to assert them. If you sign your review and it is published, we will credit you by name.

E9.3 Back-up licence. If the assignment in E9.1 is ineffective for any reason, you grant us an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence, which we may transfer and sublicense, to do anything with your review that would otherwise need your permission.

E9.4 What we may do. We may use, publish, license, adapt, redact or decline to publish your review, in any form and any medium, and transfer our rights in it to anyone.

E9.5 Your own record. Once your review is published, you may list it in your professional record, such as your ORCID record or CV, with a link to it on our website. Before then, you may say only that you review for Peer Reviews, without identifying any manuscript. You may not publish your review anywhere else.

E9.6 You will sign any document we reasonably ask for to confirm our rights in your review.

E9.7 You promise that your review is your own original work, that you have the right to make this assignment, including any permission your employer requires, and that your review doesn’t infringe anyone’s rights.

E10. Indemnity and liability

E10.1 You will indemnify us against all claims, losses, costs and expenses, including reasonable legal fees, arising from:

  • any statement in your review that you knew was false, or were reckless as to whether it was true
  • any infringement of someone else’s rights by material you include in your review
  • any breach of E4 (confidentiality) or E5 (no AI tools)

E10.2 Subject to A8.1 and A8.2, our total liability to you is limited to the fees payable to you for the reviews concerned.

E11. Ending

E11.1 You may ask us to remove you from our register at any time. Please complete any review you have accepted, or tell us promptly if you can’t.

E11.2 We may withdraw an invitation, or remove you from our register, at any time. If we withdraw an invitation after you have submitted, on time, a review that meets our guidelines, we still pay you.

E11.3 E4, E8.4, E8.6, E9 and E10 continue after you stop reviewing for us.