Journal of Thyroid Cancer · For Reviewers
For Reviewers
A practical guide to JTC peer review and the scientific questions relevant to thyroid-oncology manuscripts.
01 · Accepting
Before you accept an invitation
- Expertise. Can you assess the central claim, not merely the topic? Decline the parts you cannot and say which; the editor can seek a second reviewer for those.
- Conflicts. Decline if you are at the same institution, have co-authored with an author recently, are in direct competition on the same question, or have a financial interest. Declare anything you are unsure about and let the editor decide.
- Time. Decline promptly if you cannot do it. A fast decline is more useful to the authors than a slow review.
- Confidentiality. The manuscript is confidential from the moment you open it. Do not share it, show it to a colleague without the editor’s agreement, or use anything in it.
- AI. Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.
- The model. Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors.
02 · Reading
What every review covers
Scope
Assess how the manuscript connects its material, methods, and conclusions to a substantive thyroid-oncology question, including cancer risk, the benign–malignant diagnostic boundary, tumor biology, care, or outcomes.
Question and design
Is the design capable of answering the question asked? This is the single most useful thing a reviewer establishes, and it is often settled in the first page of the methods.
Methods
Enough detail to repeat the study. Name what is missing rather than saying the methods are insufficient.
Statistics
Appropriate to the design and the data, with missing data handled and stated. Say if you are not able to assess this.
Results
Internally consistent between text, tables and figures, and reported without interpretation.
Interpretation
Conclusions held to what the design supports. This is where most thyroid-cancer manuscripts overreach, and it is usually fixable.
Limitations
Stated honestly, in the discussion, rather than in a closing sentence that lists them without engaging with them.
Ethics and privacy
Approval and consent reported; no patient identifiable from text or images. Raise this with the editor immediately if in doubt.
03 · Clinical
Clinical studies
- Population. Where the patients came from, over what period, consecutive or selected.
- Subtype. Which thyroid tumor or diagnostic group, established how, and classified using which applicable classification and edition.
- Stage and risk. Which staging and risk-stratification systems, and which editions.
- Intervention. Defined operationally — extent of surgery, radioiodine activity and indication, drug, dose, duration.
- Comparator. What the comparison group received and how it was chosen. A historical control in a disease whose management has changed is rarely a fair comparison.
- Follow-up. Long enough for the endpoint, with completeness reported and losses accounted for.
- Outcomes. Appropriate to the thyroid malignancy, disease course, study aim, and claims. Recurrence, response, survival, quality of life, or other endpoints may be appropriate in different settings.
- Conclusions. Does a retrospective series support the claim, or only describe what happened?
04 · Diagnostic
Diagnostic and biomarker studies
- Reference standard. What the test was compared against, and whether it was applied to everyone or only to those who proceeded to surgery.
- Verification bias. If only test-positive patients received the reference standard, accuracy is overstated. Say so.
- Population. The spectrum of disease studied. Performance in a surgical series does not transfer to an unselected nodule clinic.
- Metrics. Sensitivity, specificity and predictive values with confidence intervals, and predictive values interpreted against the prevalence in the setting of use.
- Thresholds. Pre-specified or derived from these data? A threshold chosen to optimize performance on the same dataset is not validated.
- Clinical utility. Does the manuscript claim the test changes management, and is there evidence that it does?
05 · Molecular
Molecular studies
- Plausibility. Is the mechanism proposed consistent with what is known of thyroid carcinogenesis?
- Samples. Source, quality, consent basis, and whether the number supports the analysis.
- Cell lines. Authenticated and correctly identified. Several widely used thyroid lines have been shown to be redundant or misidentified.
- Reproducibility. Independent replicates, controls, and statistics appropriate to the experiment.
- Validation. Whether findings were confirmed in an independent cohort.
- Translation. Whether an association has been presented as a clinical application.
06 · Imaging
Imaging studies
- Acquisition. Equipment, parameters, contrast or radiopharmaceutical, and timing.
- Readers. How many, how experienced, whether blinded, and how disagreement was resolved.
- Ground truth. The reference standard and the interval between imaging and it.
- Reproducibility. Inter- and intra-reader agreement with the statistic used.
- Claims. Whether diagnostic performance in this dataset is presented as clinical performance.
07 · Computational
Computational and AI studies
- Provenance. Where the data came from, the period, inclusion criteria, ethics basis.
- Leakage. Partitioned at patient level? Preprocessing and feature selection performed inside the training fold only? This is the most common fatal flaw and it is often not visible in the results.
- Validation. Internal, and external where claimed. An internally validated model is a hypothesis.
- Calibration. For probabilistic prediction models, assess calibration as well as discrimination; use suitable evaluation measures for other computational aims.
- Comparator. A real baseline evaluated on the same data — an existing score, a reporting system, or a clinician.
- Bias. Performance across the subgroups the model would be used on.
- Generalizability. The populations, scanners or laboratories the result can hold for.
- Claims. Whether retrospective performance has been presented as clinical usefulness.
08 · Case reports
Case reports
- Lesson. Is there something another clinician could use, or only an unusual patient?
- Completeness. Presentation, workup, pathology, treatment, follow-up and outcome, with a clear timeline.
- Consent and privacy. Documented consent to publish; nothing identifying in text or images.
- Boundaries. A single case shows what happened, not why. Flag causal language and treatment recommendations.
09 · Writing
Writing and submitting the review
Separate major from minor
Lead with what determines whether the work is sound. A list that mixes a fatal design flaw with a typo helps neither the author nor the editor.
Be specific
Point to the line, the table or the figure. “The statistics are inappropriate” is not actionable; naming the test and why it does not fit is.
Say what is good
The editor needs to know the strengths as well as the problems in order to weigh a decision.
Recommend, do not decide
Your recommendation advises the editor. The decision is the editor’s, and a recommendation is not binding.
Suspected misconduct
Do not raise it with the authors. Tell the editor, with what you noticed and where.
Afterwards
After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
10 · Joining
Reviewing for JTC
JTC is building its reviewer pool across thyroid oncology. Researchers and clinicians publishing in the field may write to the editorial office with a CV or relevant publication list, current affiliation, areas of expertise, and an ORCID iD where available.
Reviewer selection is based on relevant expertise and availability. Recognition and billing administration remain separate from the handling of a reviewer’s own submissions.
Reviewer service and recognition
Reviewing contributes to the assessment of thyroid-oncology research and develops critical appraisal skills. Reviewers may request a certificate of completed service from the editorial office. Invitations to review special-issue papers or to apply for editorial roles are based on relevant expertise and the journal’s needs.
Fee relief is administered under the publisher’s applicable billing terms, separately from peer review and editorial decisions on the reviewer’s own manuscripts.
Review resources
The review invitation provides the current review instructions and submission route. Additional templates or training guidance may be requested from [email protected].
Suggested review structure
- Summarize the research question and contribution.
- Assess scope, design, methods, evidence, reporting, ethics, and limitations.
- List major concerns with specific manuscript locations and reasons.
- List minor clarifications separately.
- Give a reasoned recommendation to the editor, keeping confidential concerns in the designated editorial channel.
Where to go next
Related pages
The policies a review applies, and what authors were asked to provide.
Journal of Thyroid Cancer (JTC) · ISSN 2574-4496 · Crossref DOI prefix 10.14302 · published open access by Open Access Pub under CC BY 4.0, with copyright retained by authors. Editorial decisions are independent of any fee, service, membership or role.