Abstract

When a manuscript is submitted to the Journal of the Association for Vascular Access (JAVA). it undergoes a stringent review process by two to three peer reviewers who are experts in the field of vascular access. To ensure that authors are provided the most helpful review possible, JAVA's Publications Committee felt that an assessment of reviewer guidelines used in the past several years was in order. Therefore, a small taskforce of members from JAVA's Publications Committee reviewed the existing guidelines and, over a three-month period, updated them. The goal of these revised guidelines is for peer reviewers to be able to provide authors with highly detailed and informative reviews. For reviewers, the new guidelines will clarify the type of information required in a review, which in turn, will generate more detailed feedback for the authors. Both authors and JAVA reviewers will find these new guidelines important because they will ultimately improve the quality of the manuscripts published in the Journal.