The Code of Conduct for peer reviewers sets out the standards and expectations associated with the role of a peer reviewer. Springer Nature is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE is an advisory body which provides guidance to editors and publishers on all aspects of publication ethics.
As members, we are committed to:
- Adhering to their Core Practices, and
- Following COPE guidelines outlining how to deal with cases of potential publication misconduct.
We aspire to a positive and proactive approach to preventing publication misconduct and encouraging sound and reliable research practices.
Peer reviewers should deal with the Publisher and its employees in a professional and courteous manner, ensuring their communications are appropriate in both volume and tone.
Conflicts of Interest
- You are expected to disclose interests that may bias the review of the Work.
- Interests, directly or indirectly related to the topic or theme, may include but are not limited to the following: funding (grants, other forms of research support such as salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses), employment, financial interests (stocks, shares, consultation fees, patents and patent applications) and non-financial interests (professional interests, personal relationships or personal beliefs such as position on editorial board, advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships; writing and/or consulting for educational purposes; expert witness; mentoring relations).
- You should declare if you have recently published a competing work.
Libellous and Defamatory Content
- You are expected to seek advice from us if you believe the review materials contain potentially libellous or defamatory content.
Confidentiality
You must respect the confidential nature of the review process and:
- Not reveal details of the review materials such as data, information, interpretation, discussion or review reports during and after peer review unless permission has been received from us;
- Not use the (un)reported material in unpublished, submitted Works for their own research.
Suspected Transgression of Ethical Standards
- Inform us if you discover any irregularities with respect to research and publication integrity and ethics.
- This may include (but is not limited to) author manipulation, citation manipulation, undeclared AI-generated content, fabrication of images and plagiarism.
Accountability
- The peer review report should be prepared by the peer reviewer themselves, unless permission has been given by us for someone else to prepare the report.
Use of AI in peer review
- Peer reviewers play a vital role in scientific publishing. Their expert evaluations and recommendations guide editors in their decisions and ensure that published research is valid, rigorous, and credible. Editors select peer reviewers primarily because of their in-depth knowledge of the subject matter or methods of the work they are asked to evaluate. This expertise is invaluable and irreplaceable. Peer reviewers are accountable for the accuracy and views expressed in their reports, and the peer review process operates on a principle of mutual trust between authors, reviewers and editors. Despite rapid progress, generative AI tools have considerable limitations: they can lack up-to-date knowledge and may produce nonsensical, biased or false information. Manuscripts may also include sensitive or proprietary information that should not be shared outside the peer review process. For these reasons we ask that, while Springer Nature explores providing our peer reviewers with access to safe AI tools, peer reviewers do not upload manuscripts into generative AI tools.
- If any part of the evaluation of the claims made in the manuscript was in any way supported by an AI tool, we ask peer reviewers to declare the use of such tools transparently in the peer review report.
