Purpose of Peer Review

Reviewing for Uncertainty Discourse and Applications (UDA) is an invitation to contribute to a careful, fair, and constructive scholarly assessment. UDA uses double-anonymous (double-blind) peer review, and manuscripts sent for external review are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers. The reviewer’s recommendation informs the editor; the final decision remains the editor’s responsibility.

Before Accepting an Invitation

Please accept an invitation only when the manuscript is within your expertise, you can provide an independent assessment, and you can meet the requested deadline. Decline promptly when the subject is outside your competence, the timetable is not realistic, or a conflict of interest could affect—or reasonably appear to affect—your judgment.

  • Keep the invitation, manuscript, review materials, and editorial correspondence confidential.
  • Do not accept an assignment when you have a personal, professional, financial, institutional, or authorship-related conflict that cannot be managed fairly.
  • Inform the editor if the manuscript is under consideration elsewhere or if you identify a serious integrity concern.
  • Do not transfer the assignment to another person without the editor’s explicit permission.

Confidentiality and Double-Anonymous Review

Do not share, copy, circulate, publicly discuss, or use unpublished information from a manuscript or review report. Do not contact the authors directly, attempt to identify them, or disclose your identity. If the identity of an author becomes apparent, continue to review objectively and inform the editor only when the information creates a meaningful conflict or integrity concern.

Reviewers must not upload a manuscript, review report, figures, data, or editorial correspondence to a generative-AI tool or other external system without the journal’s explicit permission. Confidentiality and intellectual-property obligations continue after the review is completed.

What to Evaluate

Assess the manuscript in light of its article type and the journal’s scope. A useful report considers, as applicable:

  • the originality, significance, and clarity of the contribution;
  • the relevance of the problem to uncertainty and its applications;
  • the validity of the assumptions, theory, model, algorithm, data, or experimental design;
  • the adequacy of baselines, comparisons, validation, robustness analysis, and uncertainty quantification;
  • the reproducibility and transparency of methods, data, code, and reporting;
  • the accuracy and balance of the references;
  • the clarity of tables, figures, equations, and conclusions; and
  • ethical, authorship, privacy, and research-integrity considerations.

For review articles, assess whether the review question is meaningful, the search or selection approach is transparent where applicable, the synthesis is critical and current, limitations are acknowledged, and the conclusions follow from the evidence. A descriptive list of publications is not, by itself, a sufficient review contribution.

Preparing the Review Report

Write a professional, evidence-based report that helps the authors improve the work and helps the editor reach a reasoned decision.

  • Begin with a concise assessment of the contribution and its principal strengths.
  • Separate major issues that affect validity, interpretation, or publishability from minor issues of presentation.
  • Explain the reasoning behind each concern and, where possible, suggest a constructive route to resolution.
  • Refer to specific sections, equations, tables, figures, or claims so that the comments can be acted upon.
  • Avoid personal remarks, dismissive language, unsupported allegations, and requests that are unrelated to the manuscript.
  • Do not demand citation of your own work or of a particular journal without a clear scholarly reason.
  • Write the report in clear academic English and keep comments to authors separate from confidential comments to the editor.

Conflicts, Integrity, and Recusal

Notify the editor confidentially if you suspect plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or manipulated data, inappropriate image manipulation, authorship problems, peer-review manipulation, or another serious breach. Do not investigate independently, accuse the authors in the report, or disclose the concern outside the editorial process. The editor may seek further information or an additional assessment.

Use of AI in Preparing a Review

AI tools cannot replace the reviewer’s independent scholarly judgment and cannot make an editorial recommendation or decision. Reviewers must not enter confidential manuscript content into an AI system. If the journal expressly permits a reviewer to use an AI tool only for limited language or structural assistance, the reviewer must verify and edit the output, protect confidentiality, and disclose the tool and purpose in the report. The reviewer remains fully responsible for every comment and recommendation.

A suitable disclosure may read: “During the preparation of this review, I used [NAME OF TOOL/SERVICE] for [PURPOSE]. I reviewed and edited the output and take full responsibility for the assessment and feedback.”

Recommendations and Revisions

Use the recommendation categories available in the submission system, but remember that a recommendation is advisory. The editor may request additional review when reports conflict or further expertise is needed. A revised manuscript may be returned to reviewers, and revision does not guarantee acceptance. Please disclose any material change in your ability to review a revision or any new conflict that arises.

UDA applies these procedures together with its Peer Review Policy, publication-ethics policy, and relevant COPE publication-ethics resources.