Submission and Technical Check
The submission is checked for completeness, article type, required files, metadata, formatting, declarations, ethical documentation, anonymization, and compliance with the journal’s submission requirements.
Peer Review Process
EDITORIAL POLICIES
Peer Review Process
The Journal of Digital Health and Advanced Biomaterials — JDHAB applies a structured, independent, confidential, and transparent editorial evaluation process designed to assess scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, clarity, relevance, and suitability for publication.
Original Research, Review Articles, Methods and Validation articles, and Case Reports / Case Series that pass initial editorial screening undergo double-anonymized peer review by at least two independent external reviewers with relevant subject expertise. When reports are substantially divergent or additional expertise is required, the editor may invite one or more additional reviewers.
Editorials are handled through the journal’s internal editorial workflow and are not routinely subject to external peer review. Corrections, retractions, notices, and other editorial materials are evaluated according to their purpose and are clearly identified by article type.
Peer review informs editorial decision-making but does not replace the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief or responsible editor for the final publication decision.
Peer Review Workflow
Editorial Screening
The editorial office evaluates scope, scientific relevance, methodological coherence, clarity, originality, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and overall suitability for external review.
Reviewer Selection
At least two independent external reviewers are selected according to subject expertise, independence, availability, and the absence of relevant competing interests.
Independent Review
Reviewers independently assess scientific quality, methods, analysis, interpretation, reporting, ethical adequacy, limitations, reproducibility, and contribution to the field.
Revision and Author Response
When revision is requested, authors must respond systematically to every reviewer and editor comment and identify the corresponding changes in the revised manuscript.
Editorial Decision
The responsible editor considers the manuscript, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical requirements, and editorial standards before recording a decision in the journal system.
Editorial Screening
Scope and Relevance
Submissions must fall within the journal’s scientific scope and make a meaningful contribution to digital health, advanced biomaterials, clinical measurement, biomedical technologies, validation, or related translational research.
Scientific and Methodological Quality
The manuscript should present a coherent research question or purpose, an appropriate design, transparent methods, suitable analysis, justified interpretation, and conclusions supported by the evidence presented.
Ethical and Editorial Compliance
Ethical approval, informed consent, consent for publication, competing-interest disclosures, funding information, data and code statements, permissions, and artificial intelligence use declarations must be provided when applicable.
Technical Readiness
The submission must use the appropriate manuscript structure and include the files, metadata, figures, tables, references, reporting checklists, and supplementary material required for editorial and peer-review assessment.
Submissions may be declined without external review when they are outside the journal’s scope, scientifically or methodologically unsuitable, ethically non-compliant, insufficiently prepared, or unlikely to benefit from external review. Such decisions are editorial decisions and do not imply that every submission will be sent to reviewers.
Review Model and Anonymization
Double-Anonymized Review
For externally reviewed scientific articles, reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors, and author identities are not disclosed to reviewers during the evaluation process.
Independent External Review
Each manuscript is normally evaluated by at least two reviewers who are not involved in the editorial handling of the submission. Additional expertise may be sought when required.
Blinded Review File
Authors must provide a blinded manuscript without names, affiliations, acknowledgments, author-contribution details, institutional identifiers, or other unnecessary information that could reveal authorship.
Limits of Anonymization
JDHAB takes reasonable measures to preserve anonymity but cannot guarantee it when authorship may be inferred from self-citation, preprints, public protocols, repositories, datasets, institutional context, or the specialized nature of the work.
Scientifically necessary references, methods, results, tables, figures, and non-identifying declarations must be retained. Reviewer identities and review reports are treated as confidential and are not published as part of the article record.
Reviewer Responsibilities
Scientific Assessment
Reviewers should provide an objective, evidence-based assessment of scientific merit, methodological soundness, reporting quality, analysis, interpretation, limitations, reproducibility, and relevance.
Constructive Evaluation
Comments should be clear, specific, respectful, and sufficiently detailed to support editorial judgment and, when appropriate, meaningful manuscript revision.
Confidentiality
Manuscripts, review files, editorial communications, and unpublished information must remain confidential. Reviewers must not share materials, contact authors directly, or use unpublished information for personal or professional advantage.
Competing Interests
Reviewers must disclose relationships or circumstances that could affect, or reasonably appear to affect, their independence and must decline the invitation when an impartial review cannot be provided.
Integrity and Citation Conduct
Reviewers should report suspected ethical or research-integrity concerns privately to the editor. Citation suggestions must be scientifically justified and must not be used to promote the reviewer’s own work or improperly increase citations.
Artificial Intelligence and Assistance
Reviewers must not upload a submitted manuscript, excerpts, data, or review materials to generative artificial intelligence systems or other external tools when confidentiality cannot be assured. Any proposed use requires prior journal authorization and disclosure. Reviewers remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, confidentiality, and integrity of their reports.
Revisions and Re-Review
Point-by-Point Response
Authors must provide a structured response addressing every editor and reviewer comment. Disagreement is permitted when supported by a clear scientific, methodological, ethical, or editorial justification.
Transparent Revision
Revised files should make substantive changes easy to identify while preserving anonymization. Authors must not add identifying information to the blinded manuscript or response intended for reviewers.
Further Evaluation
Revised manuscripts may be returned to the original reviewers, sent to new reviewers, or assessed by the responsible editor, depending on the nature and extent of the requested changes.
No Guarantee of Acceptance
An invitation to revise does not guarantee acceptance. A revised manuscript may require further changes or may be declined if substantive concerns remain unresolved.
Editorial Decisions
Accept Submission
The manuscript is considered suitable for publication, subject only to final editorial, technical, and production checks.
Revisions Required
The manuscript requires limited changes that may be assessed by the responsible editor without a full new external-review cycle.
Resubmit for Review
Substantive changes are required. The revised manuscript will normally undergo further editorial assessment and may be returned to external reviewers.
Decline Submission
The manuscript is not considered suitable for publication because of scientific, methodological, ethical, editorial, reporting, or scope-related concerns.
Editorial Independence and Competing Interests
Reviewer recommendations inform, but do not determine, the final decision. The Editor-in-Chief or responsible editor retains authority for acceptance, revision, resubmission, or rejection and may seek additional review when necessary to support a reliable judgment.
Editors and editorial board members must not participate in the evaluation of submissions when they have a competing interest. Manuscripts authored by an editor, board member, journal staff member, close collaborator, or affiliated person are assigned to an independent editor who has no relevant conflict; the author-editor has no role in reviewer selection, access to confidential reviews, or the decision.
Editorial decisions are based on the scientific and scholarly merits of the submission and are made independently of commercial, institutional, personal, financial, or other inappropriate external influence. The same review standards apply to themed content and invited scientific contributions when external peer review is required.
Research-Integrity Concerns
If reviewers or editors identify possible plagiarism, duplicate submission, data or image irregularities, inappropriate authorship, undisclosed competing interests, ethical non-compliance, or other concerns, the evaluation may be paused while the matter is assessed under the journal’s Publication Ethics policy. Authors may be asked to provide explanations, original data, approvals, consent documentation, protocols, or other relevant records.
Concerns are evaluated separately from routine scientific disagreement. The journal may seek additional expert or ethical advice and may decline the submission when the integrity or reliability of the work cannot be established.
Appeals and Complaints
Authors may submit a reasoned appeal when they believe that a decision resulted from a material factual, procedural, or ethical error. An appeal must identify the decision being challenged and provide a concise evidence-based explanation; disagreement with reviewer judgment alone is not sufficient.
Appeals are assessed by the Editor-in-Chief or, when a conflict exists, by an editor who was not responsible for the original decision. Additional advice may be requested. Submission of an appeal does not guarantee reconsideration, external re-review, or reversal of the decision. Concerns about reviewer conduct, confidentiality, competing interests, or editorial procedure may be directed confidentially to the JDHAB Editorial Office.
Review Timelines
JDHAB seeks to conduct editorial screening and peer review without unnecessary delay. However, the time required varies according to manuscript complexity, reviewer availability, revision quality, additional methodological or ethical assessment, and the need for further review.
The journal does not guarantee acceptance, a fixed decision date, or an unusually short peer-review period. Authors receive relevant status updates and decisions through the journal’s editorial system.
Commitment to Rigorous Peer Review
JDHAB is committed to peer review that promotes scientific rigor, methodological transparency, ethical responsibility, confidentiality, editorial independence, constructive scholarly evaluation, and the reliability of the published scientific record.
