Peer Review

The primary criteria for judging the acceptability of a manuscript are its quality, novelty, and scientific importance. However, editorial decisions are based not just on the technical merits of the work, but also on factors such as policy and regulation, presentation of the material, and relevance to the journal’s general readership.
At the discretion of the Editors, a manuscript may be rapidly rejected, without external peer review, if it had academic dishonourable behaviors, such as plagiarism, practicing fraud and so on, or it is deemed uncompetitive or outside the scope of the journal. All manuscripts are judged in relation to other submissions currently under consideration.
Manuscripts that have passed initial screening by the Editors are reviewed by members of the Editorial Board and/or other experts in the field. The Editors select reviewers and make the further decision on the manuscript. Then we organize experts in different fields to give final decision on the manuscript through manuscripts meeting. Reviewers remain unknown to the authors. Every manuscript is treated by the editors and reviewers as privileged information, and they are instructed to exclude themselves from review of any manuscript that may involve a conflict of interest or the appearance of such.
Rebuttals to rejected manuscripts are strongly discouraged, and requests for resubmission of rejected manuscripts are generally not granted without significant demonstration of errors in the review or decision process. The majority of articles are rejected on grounds of insufficient priority or lack of relevance to critical care medicine, data quality or technical issues are also the reason for rejection.

Instructions for reviewers
Our expert reviewers are instrumental in achieving the high quality and prominence among medical journals that Chinese Critical Care Medicine strives for. We greatly appreciate your participation in our peer review process and the contribution of your time and expertise.
Please note that all information regarding a submitted paper should be kept confidential.
By accepting an invitation to review you certify that you have no conflict of interest, either financial or professional. Please notify the editor and recuse yourself from reviewing a manuscript if you believe you have a direct financial interest in the subject of the manuscript or a relationship with an author or affiliated institution that may represent a potential conflict relevant to review of the manuscript, such as current employment at the same institution, recent mentoring, close collaboration, or a joint grant.
What criteria should I use to write my review?
If the manuscript includes actual data, are the methods employed adequate and appropriate for the questions being addressed? Are the conclusions justified given the data presented?
If the manuscript does not present original data, but instead provides a review or perspective on a topic, are the content, style, and tone of the manuscript appropriate? Are the arguments balanced? Will the manuscript stimulate constructive discussion?
Is the presentation clear? Are the style and organization high quality?
How important and novel is the work submitted?
Do the conclusions of the study provide important and sufficiently novel results to advance the field?
If, in your judgment, the submission lacks sufficient scientific rigor, or fails to sufficiently advance the field, please tell the authors and the editor.
When you provide comments to the author, be as clear and constructive as possible. In your confidential remarks to the Editor, please give your honest opinion about the suitability of the paper for publication in Chinese Critical Care Medicine. Please be reminded that any appearance of conflict of interest or suspicion of duplicate publication, fabrication of data, or plagiarism should be reported to the editor immediately.
If you feel that a few additional experiments are needed to justify or enhance the scientific basis of the conclusions, please request that the authors do so. However, please keep in mind that you are asked to evaluate the work as it has been submitted in its current form, so we advise against asking the authors to perform extensive new experiments. If after a careful assessment you feel that extensive additional experiments are needed, it is usually better to recommend that the paper be rejected.
What overall recommendation can I make?
As reviewer you are given four options to choose:

• Reject
• Major Revision needed
• Minor Revision needed
• Accept

What is the difference between Major and Minor Revision decisions?
An important distinction in your recommendation is between “major” and “minor” revision. “Major” revision for experimental manuscripts means that any new data should be obtainable, and the manuscript modified, within 1 months of the editor’s decision to invite a revision. For clinical manuscripts, data handling/analysis and manuscript modification should be achievable within this 1-month period. “Minor” revision usually refers to relatively simple changes to the data presentation or text.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The Chinese Medical Association (CMA) andChinese Critical Care Medicine are committed to ensuring the integrity of all their activities. The conflict of interest disclosure policy for Chinese Critical Care Medicine contributors requires each author to disclose all relevant financial and other interests, regardless of amount or value, which might be construed as resulting in an actual, potential, or apparent conflict in one’s role as contributor to Chinese Critical Care Medicine.
At the time of submission to Chinese Critical Care Medicine, authors are required to disclose any potential conflict of interest, which may include one or more of the following: employment; consultancy within the past two years; ownership interests (including stock options) in a start-up company, the stock of which is not publicly traded; ownership interest (including stock options but excluding indirect investments through mutual funds and the like) in a publicly traded company; research funding; honoraria received directly from an entity; paid expert testimony within the past two years; any other potential financial relationship (e.g., holding a patent or receiving royalties); and/or membership on another entity’s Board of Directors or its advisory committees (whether for profit or not for profit).
Any involvement by pharmaceutical or medical device company employees or medical writers supported by a pharmaceutical or medical device company in the writing of an article must be clearly defined and disclosed in the Conflict-of-Interest Disclosure section of the manuscript (if the individual is an author) or the Acknowledgments section (if the individual is not an author).

For Review Articles and Chinese Critical Care Medicine Talks: Pharmaceutical or medical device company employees and medical writers supported by a pharmaceutical or medical device company are not permitted to have any role in writing these articles. Please direct any questions regarding this policy to the Editor-in-Chief prior to submission.
If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and to collectively list ALL pertinent commercial relationships in the manuscript (under the Acknowledgment section or in the Authorship section) and in the metadata of the online submission.
It is important to note that this policy and the disclosure statements will not be regarded as creating a presumption of impropriety in the existence of financial interests or other relationships of a commercial nature. Instead Chinese Critical Care Medicine purpose is to inform its editors, reviewers, and readers of the existence of financial relationships pertinent to the article in the interest of full transparency in the peer review and publication processes.
During the peer review process any conflicts of interest will be disclosed only to editors and reviewers, who will keep them confidential. If the paper is accepted for publication in Chinese Critical Care Medicine, all disclosures, including statements of no conflict of interest, will appear in published article, in the Authorship section.
Upon acceptance, all authors are asked to sign their copyright transfer, which is available to all authors upon successful initial submission and requires authors to confirm that any relevant conflicts of interest are disclosed in the manuscript. An article will not be published in the journal until all signatures are received.