Reviewers ensure that Insights into Imaging publish high-quality papers by evaluating manuscripts design and offering clear suggestions and guidance for improvement. Problematic unprofessional comments, lacking constructive criticism and hostile reviews are not allowed and editors will delete/modify these comments from the author’s reviews.

Reviewers are encouraged to follow COPE’s guidance on peer reviews. Mainly, reviewers should respect confidentiality in the review process, notify the journal if any conflict of interest is identified during the review process, and report if an irregularity has been identified with respect to the ethics of the publication. A competing conflict of interest exists when the review might be influenced by personal or financial relationship with authors or organizations.

Reviewer reports

Peer review is a crucial tool to bring research forward by evaluating manuscripts and offering suggestions for improvement. The voluntary work of our reviewers is the key element in this process.

All reviewers for the ESR journals should be aware of their responsibility to guide authors by providing constructive feedback. In both the ‘Feedback to Authors’ as well as ‘Confidential Comments to the Editor’, they are asked to give their opinion and criticism in a professional, neutral language.

Article types

The journal favors publishing on Critical Review, Guidelines and Position, Pictorial Review, Scientific, Meta-analysis, and Management papers.

• Critical Review Papers focus on overviews on emerging techniques or state-of-the-art topics with an up-to-date and innovational approach. They provide access to the best evidence-base knowledge, analyzing and summarizing the increasing output of scientific publications. They might find common concepts from reviewed material, test a hypothesis based on published evidence, or analyze systematic discrepancies to consolidate what has been achieved.

• Guidelines and Position Papers aim to determine a course of action or to streamline particular processes according to a sound practice. They must be generated by experts in consensus, using evidence levels approaches, aiding to good clinical practice by helping physicians weigh the benefits and risks of a particular technical performance, diagnostic procedure, or therapeutic action. They also include any opinion or statement related to the imaging value chain and patient’s management aspects on imaging related topics.

• Pictorial Review Papers focus on the educational aspects of imaging, with a pearls and pitfalls approach, and on the revision of imaging criteria. Authors should briefly provide their experience on the topic.

• Original Scientific Articles are scientific works with a clear hypothesis and an experimental design to explore observations and answer questions related to imaging.

• Meta-analysis research analyzes multiple studies using a methodology with different statistical techniques to provide a global result about a specific problem.

• Management includes reviews and recommendations on topics related to quality improvements in safety, performance, professional issues, and outcomes.

Review Checklist

• What are the major messages of the paper?
• Will the information provided in and by the article be of interest to the medical community?
• Is the paper innovative and of practical value?
• Does the organisation of the paper follow the main aspects described in the objectives?
• Did the authors provide information about relevant professional experience which relates to the cases they evaluated?
• Are there any statements that could lead to misconceptions?
• Do the figures aid the description of the topic? Can they be improved?
• Does each figure add value to the article?
• Did the authors provide recent references and did they cite correctly?

Please consider both, qualitative and quantitative criteria, when making a decision:

Qualitative criteria

Any methodological question, potential misunderstanding, major discrepancy between different parts of the manuscript should qualify for a “Reject & Resubmit” decision; changes suggested for better understanding, easier reading, or better connection of the data and the text might qualify for a revision.

Please consider the following qualities of your report:

• Give specific instructions, not general comments (example: “The results are not reproducible from what is described” is better than “This paper contains poor methods”)
• Give constructive criticism/suggestions to improve the work.
• Distinguish minor changes (improving the manuscript) from major issues (critical for publication).
• Keep your tone fair and respectful.
• Do not include your suggestion whether the paper should be published or not – this is the decision of the Editor in Chief, who will diligently consider the comments and criticisms of both reviewers.
• Do not sign the review with your name as we have a double-blind review process.
• Do not correct language errors, but let the Editor in Chief know if an article is poorly written and the scientific content might be misunderstood.

Quantitative criteria

If there are multiple minor points of criticism, this can turn a minor revision into a major one. Please keep in mind that “Accept” is usually not an appropriate suggestion for a first revision, and that a manuscript should be rejected if changes would, most likely, result in a new design and methodology.

Please consider the following manuscript criteria:

• The title should be informative and, preferably, convey the conclusion of the study and not just be a neutral description.
• The abstract needs to be in line with the main text and attract the attention of the reader.
• The introduction should explain why the work is important and provide a clear hypothesis and objective.
• Materials and methods should provide information to reproduce the study, and the study design should be in line with the research question.
• The number of patients or measurements should be high enough to be significant.
• The results need to correlate with the questions posed in materials and methods.
• The discussion is meant to interpret the results and should contain essential findings, critical discussion, limitations, relevance and conclusions.
• Images and tables should reflect the presented findings and results.