Peer Review Model

Single-blind external review

• Reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors.
• The Editorial Office manages reviewer independence and conflicts of interest.
• Reviewers assess the manuscript and relevant supplementary materials supplied through the secure portal.
• Reviewer reports are sent to authors without reviewer names and are not routinely published.
• Reviews are not signed in correspondence with authors.

Number and independence of reviewers

Every Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis accepted by GMR must first receive reports from at least two independent external reviewers. An additional reviewer may be invited when reports conflict, specialist statistical or information-retrieval expertise is required, or integrity concerns need further assessment.

Supplementary materials

Search strategies, protocols, reporting checklists, flow diagrams, extracted data, risk-of-bias tables, certainty profiles, appendices and analytic code are part of the review record and should be examined when relevant to the reviewer’s expertise.

Materials not normally sent for external review

Corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, publisher notices, editorial notices and administrative announcements may undergo editorial assessment rather than ordinary external review. The published item will identify its nature.

Editorial decision

The recommendation of a reviewer does not constitute the final decision. The handling editor evaluates all reports, the manuscript and journal policies. The Editor-in-Chief may review difficult, disputed or integrity-related cases.