OLD TESTAMENT ESSAYS (NEW SERIES) ascribes to the National Code of Best Practice in Editorial Discretion and Peer Review for South African Scholarly Journals.
In the code the following is said about the indispensable role of peer reviewers:
- Peer reviewers (always more than one, and preferably three) must have expertise and special knowledge of the topic addressed in a submitted paper, in order to fulfil a range of functions in the system of global knowledge accumulation. They must always report in writing, with clear recommendations for acceptance of the paper in question, with or without revision, or rejection, as the case may be. They must especially:
- scrutinise the methods and results in terms of consistency, interpretability and likely reproducibility;
- identify gaps that could or should be filled to enhance the interpretability and strength of the findings and/or insights;
- suggest how the paper can be improved in terms of style, length and focus;
- assess the proper citation and referencing of previously published studies (as outlined above the ‘principles’ section), including the critical issue of the originality of the work;
- contest conclusions not justified by the results or arguments presented; and
- ‘place’ the work in the existing matrix of knowledge in the relevant area or field.
- Any potential or real conflict of interest must be declared to the editor by a peer reviewer before the review is submitted. All peer reports and substantive correspondence must be retained, for possible later scrutiny, within a well-designed record system out. A list of peer reviewers used by a journal should be published at least once a once a year, and reviewers who default on their obligations should not be retained for further service.
- Context-bound prior academic examination, as part of a thesis or dissertation submitted for degree purposes, of scholarly work submitted for publication in a journal does not replace peer review in the specific and different context of the latter.