Role of Review Panel Members
Peer reviewers for Perspectives in Health Information Management (PHIM) have an important role in evaluating manuscripts and helping inform the editors about the suitability of manuscripts for publication. We recognize that acting as a peer reviewer takes significant time and effort, and we deeply value your expertise as practitioners, educators, and researchers yourselves. By upholding high reviewer standards and considering which manuscripts will make significant, interesting contributions to the literature in our profession, you are helping us ensure that PHIM, the official scholarly publication of AHIMA, will advance scholarship in health information.
While the Editors gratefully receive a reviewer’s recommendations, final decisions are usually based on evaluations derived from several sources, so the outcome of a manuscript will not always align with an individual reviewer's decision.
Confidentiality and Conflict of Interest
The unpublished manuscript is a privileged document. The manuscript may not be cited or referred to before it has been published. Do not use the information it contains for the advancement of your own research. To maintain the impartiality of our review process, determine whether there is any conflict of interest for you and whether you can judge an individual manuscript impartially. If you believe that you cannot be impartial, please decline the invitation to review with an explanation.
Choosing a Recommended Decision
Consider these guidelines when recommending a decision on a manuscript. Remember that revision may move a manuscript up the scale and greatly improve its likelihood for acceptance. Only rarely are manuscripts accepted without some revisions.
- Accept: The manuscript contains new, timely information; data is clearly presented; discussions and conclusions flow logically from data; title and length are appropriate; language and readability are strong; citations are complete. The manuscript requires no changes prior to publication.
- Minor revision: The manuscript requires only minor clarifications to language or presentation, not to the methodology; re-review is not necessary upon return by the authors, except by the Editor. The manuscript has no major flaws in concept or logic; it adds some new information; the analysis is appropriate; the language is good; citations are reasonable.
- Major revision: The subject matter is of interest to PHIM's readers and the article has potential to contribute to the literature, but there may be flaws in the study organization, data collection, or methods. The analysis could be inadequate or inappropriate; there may be a disconnect between data and conclusions; citations could be incomplete or excessive. The manuscript will require re-review by the original reviewers after revision, but is likely to be accepted after substantial updates.
- Reject: The manuscript does not hold sufficient interest or relevance for PHIM's readers, duplicates what already exists in the literature, or has flaws too significant to warrant publication in its current state.
Evaluating Ethical Issues
In addition to the quality of research, we ask reviewers to note possible breaches of publication policy or ethical conduct such as:
- Plagiarism: Material is copied from another source without attestation, reference, or permission.
- Missing or incomplete references: The author has not given proper credit to previously published ideas or data. References are missing, incomplete, or incorrect.
- Dual submission: Be wary of attempts to submit or publish similar material more than once. This act is often difficult to detect, but checking literature citations, as well as having a critical eye, is helpful.
- Conflicts of interest: These could include explicit conflicts listed in the (anonymized) disclosures, but could also appear in the form of advocacy for a specific product in the article.
Composing Comments to the Editor
Your critique: (e.g., criticism, arguments, suggestions) concerning the manuscript are most useful to the editor if they are carefully documented. If there are errors, try to indicate all of them unless they are too numerous and the manuscript is recommended for rejection.
Suggested revisions should be described as such and not expressed as conditions of acceptance. Remarks should reflect positive and negative comments. We are interested in learning about the positive contributions that this manuscript can make to PHIM readers and to the HIM body of knowledge, as well as any intellectual or stylistic problems that must be resolved. Who must read this manuscript and why? How does this manuscript advance our understanding of its key topics? How well does it build upon previous research and thinking about its topic?
The manuscript will be copyedited before publication. This will include correcting spelling errors and grammar, as well as adherence to journal style. While you should not feel obligated to make grammatical or writing corrections, it is helpful if you note in your review whether the author should take greater care with writing/editing during a revision.
Please do note discipline-specific writing errors that copyeditors might miss, such as the use of scientific jargon, outmoded terminology, and misspelled, incorrect, or outdated scientific terms.
Composing Comments to the Author
For the benefit of the author, please frame your comments in a constructive and professional manner. Do not state in your remarks to the authors whether you think the manuscript should be accepted or rejected. Manuscripts should be evaluated on current content and not on what the reviewers think that the author should have done.
Please distinguish between revisions considered essential and those judged merely desirable.