For Reviewers
What the journal asks you to assess, what it does not, and the questions this subject makes specific.
Before you accept
Before you accept an invitation
- Expertise. Accept if you can assess the substance. If you can judge the methods but not the clinical context, or the reverse, say so — the editor can pair you with someone complementary. A partial review, honestly labeled, is more useful than a confident one outside your field.
- Conflicts. Decline if you have collaborated with, supervised or been supervised by an author recently; are at the same institution; have a financial interest; are in direct competition on the same question; or cannot read the work impartially. If unsure, declare it and let the editor decide.
- Time. Accept only if you can complete the review in the period offered. Declining promptly is a service; accepting and going silent is not.
- Blinding. Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts. For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors.
Assessment
What to assess
- Scope and contribution
- Does the manuscript meet the journal's relevance test — a mental-health question central, and a substantive contribution to the mental health of women or girls? Descriptive, population-focused work can qualify; a comparison with men is not required. What does the field know after this paper that it did not know before?
- Question and design
- Is the question answerable by this design? Was the design chosen for the question, or the question fitted to available data?
- Methods
- Could you repeat the study from what is written? Check recruitment and setting, the instruments and their validation in a population like this one, how missing data were handled, and whether the analysis was pre-specified.
- Analysis
- Are the methods appropriate and correctly applied? Are effect sizes reported with their uncertainty rather than p-values alone? Are subgroup analyses pre-specified or exploratory, and labeled accordingly?
- Results
- Do the numbers in the text, tables and abstract agree? Is what was not found reported as well as what was?
- Interpretation
- Do the conclusions follow from the results, or from the hypothesis? This is where most manuscripts need work.
- Limitations
- Are the limitations that actually threaten the conclusion named, or only conventional ones?
- Ethics and reporting
- Ethics approval and consent, trial registration where applicable, a data-availability statement, and the reporting guideline for the design.
This subject
Questions this subject makes specific
- Is the women-specific dimension real?
- Ask whether the manuscript meaningfully contributes to women's mental health, or whether it is a general study whose participants happened to be women. If the latter, say so as a scope observation and let the editor weigh it.
- Are sex and gender used correctly?
- Check they are not treated as synonyms, that the manuscript states which it examined and how it was ascertained, and that a social finding is not attributed to biology or the reverse.
- Is a reproductive-stage finding over-attributed to hormones?
- A result around a reproductive transition often has endocrine, psychological and social contributions the design cannot separate. Check the interpretation acknowledges that.
- Do the claims exceed the design?
- Observational associations alone do not establish causation; causal analyses should state assumptions, address bias and report uncertainty and sensitivity analyses. Interpret findings within the design’s strengths and limitations, including the population and setting to which they apply.
- Trauma and violence research
- Assess participant safety as part of the science: the distress protocol, the referral route offered, how exposure was measured, and whether any reported detail could place a participant at risk.
- Perinatal and reproductive research
- Check that reproductive stage and the timing of assessment are stated precisely, that clinical definitions are given rather than assumed, and that relevant confounders — parity, pregnancy outcome, feeding status, sleep — are addressed.
- Suicide and self-harm
- Check the case definition and ascertainment, and that no method or means detail is published.
- Identifiability
- In a small service or community, a combination of role, age, location and timing can identify someone. Flag anything in a quotation, table or figure that could.
- Qualitative research
- Judge it by qualitative standards: fit between question, sampling, analysis and claim; reflexivity; and whether the interpretation is supported by the data presented. Assess the adequacy and rationale of qualitative sampling for the research question; do not apply quantitative power calculations.
- Instruments across populations
- Where an instrument was translated or used outside the population it was validated in, check what was done to establish it still measures what it claims.
The review
Writing the review
- Open with the contribution. Two or three sentences on what the manuscript is and what it adds. This tells the editor you read it, and tells the authors you understood it.
- Separate major from minor. Major points threaten the conclusion. Minor points are everything else. Numbering them lets the authors respond point by point.
- Be specific. "The analysis is inadequate" cannot be acted on. "The model does not adjust for parity, which is associated with both the exposure and the outcome here" can.
- Say what would fix it. Where a problem is fixable, say how. Where it is not, say that plainly.
- Criticize the work, not the authors. Anything you would not say to a colleague's face does not belong in a review.
- Recommend. Give a recommendation, and keep any comment about the authors' identity, or about the journal's decision, in the confidential note to the editor rather than in the comments to authors.
Conduct
Confidentiality and conduct
- Confidentiality
- A manuscript under consideration is confidential. Do not share it, discuss it, or use its content. Do not contact the authors directly.
- After you submit
- After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
- AI tools
- Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.
- If you suspect misconduct
- Raise it with the editor in the confidential note, with what you observed and any source you are comparing against. Do not accuse in the comments to authors, and do not investigate yourself.
- Delegation
- If you want a colleague or trainee to help with the review, ask the editor first and name them. An undeclared co-reviewer is a confidentiality breach.
- Editorial PoliciesConfidentiality, interests, integrity and corrections.
- Aims and ScopeThe relevance test a scope comment should reference.
- Instructions for AuthorsWhat the authors were asked to provide.
- For EditorsHow your review will be used.
The journal is grateful for the time reviewing takes. The Journal of Women's Mental Health (JWMH) is published by Open Access Pub under CC BY 4.0. Contact the editorial office.