Reviewer Questionnaire

This is the form which summarises the standard your report is held to: if an author appeals on the ground that a report fell short, this form is what "short" is measured against.

You are answering two questions, and certification needs yes to both.

The two are independent. A manuscript can be entirely sound and still not certified because it was aimed higher than it reaches. That is a normal outcome and not a criticism of the work, so you say so, and you say where it would fit.

Three rules throughout.

• Answer on the manuscript in front of you. Whether you would have done the work differently is not the question, and is not a reason to refuse.
• Say what you looked at. Every area needs a sentence specific to this manuscript. "Fine", "no issues" and "as expected" are not sentences about this manuscript, and will be sent back.
• The form fits any field. It never assumes there is a dataset, code, an experiment or a control group. Materials means whatever this manuscript's claims rest on. Where a question names something the work does not have, the answer is not applicable, with a reason, never a mark against the manuscript.

Terms in bold on first use are defined in the appendix. Complete the parts in order: Parts 1 and 2 gate the rest.

Part 1 · Before you read the manuscript

1.1 Must you decline? Confirm that none of these applies to you, for this manuscript or any of its authors. Each is a bar, not a disclosure, and declaring one does not cure it.

• ☐ None applies. → Continue.
• ☐ One or more applies. → Decline. Do not continue. You bear no consequence for declining, at any point, including after you have started.

One exception. If you reviewed an earlier, certified version of this same manuscript, the prior-role bar does not apply to you for a later version. Nothing else in it can be set aside. ☐ This applies to me.

1.2 What to declare. Anything that is not a bar above but that a reader should know: recent co-authorship, shared affiliation, competing work in the same area, a rivalry, a strong prior public position on this question. Declaring does not disqualify you. XSci decides whether to proceed, following ICMJE and major-publisher practice. Goes on the record. Write "None" if none.

1.3 Can you assess all of it? Having seen the abstract, the methods and what the claims rest on: is there any area in Part 3 that this manuscript engages and you are not equipped to judge?

• ☐ No.
• ☐ Yes, which: ______. Tell us now; we will add or change reviewer. Do not mark such an area not applicable, which is for what the manuscript does not do, never for what you cannot judge.

1.4 The target journals. Shown here: ______________. Authors may name up to three, and naming is optional, so you will see one of two things.

• Journals the authors named. Judge against those. Potential for any one of them is enough.
• The default, the top journals in this field. The authors named none. You decide what counts as a top journal here, using the same judgement you would apply to a named one, and you must name the journals you had in mind in Part 5. Many authors leave this blank because they genuinely do not know where the work belongs; for them, your view on placement is the most useful thing in the report.

Can you judge whether work of this kind reaches the level of that target?

• ☐ Yes.
• ☐ No. A named list too wide, too unfamiliar or too poorly matched to the work; or, on the default, you cannot identify the top journals of this field confidently enough to judge against them. Tell us now. If the assessment goes ahead with you, the honest answer in Part 5 is that you cannot place the work, and that is a refusal with that as the reason. It is never a reason to certify by default.

1.5 Working blind. Working blind is the default and is yours to set aside. Your answer goes on the record.

• ☐ I have seen none of: AI review output, earlier reports, or verification records for this manuscript.
• ☐ I have chosen to see: ☐ AI review output ☐ earlier reports ☐ verification records.

Either way: earlier checking never settles an area for you. That part of the work was checked before, by a journal, a service, or anyone else, is evidence you may weigh. It does not replace your own judgement.

1.6 Your own use of AI. What AI system, if any, you used in preparing this report, and for what. Goes on the record. The judgement must in every case be yours.

Part 2 · Attestation

☐ I have examined the full manuscript, anything posted with it, and any underlying materials I rely on in this report. A report without this is not complete.

2.1 What you had. ☐ full text ☐ supplement ☐ the underlying materials the manuscript declares, whatever form they take here: data, code, transcripts, source texts, images, instrument or archival records, derivations, protocols ☐ a protocol or registration, where the work has one. Note anything you expected and could not get.

Part 3 · The nine areas

This is the centre of the report. It is what the authors can act on, and it is delivered in full whatever you decide. Do not cut it short because Part 5 has already settled the outcome. A refusal on fit does not reduce what the authors are owed here.

For each area the manuscript engages: one finding, and at least one sentence saying what you looked at and what you found.

The four findings, the only answers available

Most of what you find belongs in the second row. The bar is not a manuscript that needs no work; it is a manuscript whose remaining work is revision rather than reconstruction. Nothing here is counted. The findings are not added up, averaged, scored or ranked, by you or by anyone afterwards. They exist so that every area gets deliberate attention.

The areas

3.7a How far you got. Record the highest that holds. Each step assumes the one before it.

1. ☐ Declared. The manuscript says what its claims rest on, and where to find it.
2. ☐ Reachable and as described. You got to what was said to be available, and it is what the manuscript says it is.
3. ☐ The reported results follow from it. You went from the materials to the reported results and they agree closely enough that the main claims are unchanged. How close is close enough is your judgement, appropriate to this kind of work.
4. ☐ None of the above.

No kind of work is privileged. A manuscript with no data and no code is not less verifiable for it; step 3 is open to it too. What step 3 means here:

This list is illustrative. If your field works another way, describe what you did.

Where what you needed was not provided, record the step that holds and say in your sentence what was missing. Absence of materials is recorded as an absence and is not by itself a major error. Whether it becomes one is a question for 3.3 (are the availability statements accurate) and 3.6 (can the claims be supported on what is presented).

Whether the findings would hold up if someone gathered new data is never assessed and never implied. Do not comment on it.

3.10 If the work is not empirical. For theoretical, formal, mathematical or qualitative work, read three areas like this. The findings and the decision are unchanged.

Where none of these fits, mark the areas that do not engage as not applicable, with a reason.

Part 4 · Six things that prevent certification

The first four are major errors by definition. If you answer yes, record a major error in the area named. Each can be resolved by the authors' response or a revision, and only prevents certification if it is still there afterwards.

What satisfies each of these is your judgement as an expert in this field. What counts as an approval, or as an adequate description of method, is not the same in clinical medicine as in history or in mathematics.

The two integrity items: refer, do not judge

If yes to either:

• Refer it to XSci and stop. You do not decide it, and you do not weigh it as a concern in Part 3.
• Do not put it in the report. The report may be published; an allegation must not be.
• Use the referral box below. While a referral is open the assessment shows as in progress, with no public reason. These matters are handled separately, with protections for everyone involved.

4.7 Referral, never published. What you observed, and where in the manuscript. Facts only, no conclusion about intent.

Part 5 · Fit against the target

This is the second half of the decision, and it is the judgement your expertise is being paid for. It rests on what you know about a literature and about what those journals' readers expect. It carries no Part 3 finding.

5.1 The target. ______________

Where the authors named journals, that is the target and any one of them is enough. Where you see the default, name here the top journals of this field as you would identify them and answer against those. A default target left unnamed is not an acceptable answer: the authors cannot act on "the top journals in your field", and a reader cannot tell what the mark was measured against.

5.2 The judgement. Assuming the revision you identified in Part 3 were carried out competently, does this manuscript have the potential to be published in any one of those journals?

• ☐ Yes.
• ☐ No.
• ☐ I cannot place this work against that target. Treated as no, with that as the reason.

Answer on the level those journals publish at, not on whether a particular editor would take it this month. You are not predicting an editorial decision; you are judging whether the contribution is of that level.

5.3 Why. What would a reader at that level expect, and what does this manuscript do or not do against that expectation? Required whichever way you answered. An answer without reasoning is a ground of appeal.

5.4 Where it would fit. Required whenever 5.2 is no or cannot place; welcome when it is yes. The journals you would actually recommend, and what the authors would need to change to be credible at the level they named.

For authors who are refused, this is the most useful thing in the report, and it is not a penalty. A manuscript named for a top journal that you think belongs in a strong specialist one is a refusal and a recommendation, in the same breath.

Three things you must not do here.

• Do not make certification conditional on the authors renaming their target. You may not offer to reconsider if they aim lower. The target was fixed when the assessment was bought.
• Do not treat an unfamiliar or over-broad target as a reason to certify by default. Say you cannot place it.
• Do not carry Part 3 concerns in as fit reasons, or fit concerns out as Part 3 findings. They are recorded separately and read separately.

Part 6 · Not your question

The form does not ask, and a report must not offer a view on: whether the findings are true · whether they would come out the same way from new data · writing quality beyond what is needed to evaluate the work · who the authors are, where they work, or who funded them.

Note what is not on that list. You are asked to form an expectation about the level and reach of the contribution. That is Part 5, and it necessarily takes in how much the work adds and to whom it matters. What stays outside is verifying that the work is right: certification is an expert's judgement that a manuscript is of publishable standard subject to revision, never a warranty that its findings are correct.

☐ My report contains no assessment of anything in this Part.

Part 7 · The decision

Record exactly one.

• ☐ Certify. No major error remains in any applicable area, and 5.2 is yes.
• ☐ Do not certify, because. Each reason stated specifically.

Both must hold. Certify is unavailable while any major error stands, and unavailable where 5.2 is no or cannot place, however sound the work is.

7.1 Reasons. One numbered reason each. Anchor a major error to the place in the manuscript it concerns; state a fit reason against the target. Say plainly which kind each one is, because they mean different things to an author: one says this needs fixing, the other says this is not the right home for it.

Three things you cannot record.

• You cannot ask for revisions. "Revise and I will judge then" is not available. "These three things are unresolved, so I do not certify" is.
• You cannot make certification conditional on a further purchase, in any form.
• You cannot contact the authors, or be contacted. Everything goes through the report.

Your decision stands alone

One version is read by one reviewer, and that reviewer is you. No second opinion moderates yours, no panel averages it, and nobody can overturn it on the merits. The certification asserts one qualified expert's judgement, and the record says exactly that.

No second reviewer ever joins. Authors cannot buy a second opinion at any price, and there is no other route to one. A version is read once, by one reviewer. Your judgement is never joined by another, never averaged, and never revisited. This holds whatever happens on appeal: a successful appeal is refunded, not re-reviewed. A re-assessment of the same version after a successful appeal is a remedy XSci may be able to offer in future; it does not exist today, and if it is ever introduced it will be by a published change to the Certification Standard and the Certification Procedure, applying only to assessments bought afterwards.

What an appeal can do, and what it cannot. Authors may appeal on the ground that a report fell below the standard of detail and quality required: areas not properly addressed, sentences that say nothing about this manuscript, a placement given without reasoning. There are four grounds in all, every one of them about the conduct and quality of an assessment and none about its conclusion: that the Certification Procedure was not followed; that the reviewer held an interest that barred them; that the report contains an error of fact about the manuscript; or that the report falls below the required standard of detail and quality. Where an appeal succeeds, the author is refunded the assessment fee, and that is the whole of the remedy. No one re-reviews the version, no one replaces you, and the decision does not change: an appeal is not a route to certification. Your report stands on the record as you wrote it and your decision is not changed. We write this as the appeal succeeds or does not succeed.

A successful appeal does reach your payment, on any of the four grounds, because each of them is a finding that the assessment was not delivered as it had to be: the payment for that assessment is not due, and is recovered if already paid. Nothing about this turns on what you decided. A refusal delivered in full is a completed, payable assessment. You are told the ground and may answer it first, with no limit on the exchanges; a question of fact is often resolved that way, and where it is resolved the appeal does not succeed and your payment stands. See the Reviewer Agreement.

The Certification Procedure is the published document that two of those grounds are measured against, and it is free to read. One ground reaches the record after release: where a reviewer held an interest that barred them and did not declare it, the certification is revoked and the author refunded. That is a consequence for the record, not a judgement on your report's contents, and nothing about you individually is published.

An appeal is never available against your conclusion, only against the quality of your report. That an author would have weighed the evidence differently, or placed the work higher, cannot be appealed. A sentence on every area and your reasoning at 5.3 are what put your judgement beyond challenge.

Your reviewer payment is the same whatever you decide. A refusal is a complete, delivered assessment, not a failure, and nothing in your payment depends on the outcome.

What the form will not accept

• Certify alongside any major error in Part 3.
• Certify where 5.2 is no or cannot place.
• An area with a finding but no sentence, or a sentence not specific to this manuscript.
• Not applicable without a reason, or on an area the manuscript plainly engages.
• Step 3 or 2 of 3.7a claimed without the steps below it.
• 5.2 answered without 5.3, or no without 5.4.
• A missing attestation (Part 2).
• Anything in the report that belongs in an integrity referral (Part 4).

A refusal with no major error anywhere and a Part 5 reason is not an inconsistency. It is the ordinary shape of a sound manuscript aimed too high.

Every submitted report is checked by XSci staff on form, never on the verdict. No one may ask you to change a decision, and no one has the authority to.

Appendix · Terms used here

Certification. The public statement that a qualified independent expert judged this version of a manuscript to have the potential, after revision of the kind a journal would normally ask for, to be published in the target journals, and to contain no major error. Binary: a manuscript is a certified preprint or it is a preprint. No score, grade or ranking exists.

Major error. A defect which, while it stands, means the central claims are wrong, unsupported or impossible to evaluate, as distinct from something the authors could reasonably be asked to put right. The first four items in Part 4 are major errors by definition.

Preprint. A manuscript the authors have posted publicly, with its own permanent identifier, before or without journal publication. Posting on XSci is never conditional on buying anything, and no one judges the work before it appears.

Record. The permanent statement of a completed assessment: the version, the date, the target journals, the decision and its reasons, your findings and sentences, your judgement on fit, your competing-interest declaration, whether you worked blind, and your own use of AI. Whether it is published is the authors' decision. A certification is public because displaying the mark is their choice; a refusal leaves no public trace unless they choose to publish it, in which case they may publish their own reply beside it.

Target journals. What the authors are aiming at, recorded when the assessment was bought: up to three named journals, or a blank that resolves to the top journals of the field, which you identify and must name. See 1.4 and 5.1.

Underlying materials. Whatever the manuscript's claims rest on, and which another competent person would need in order to check them. Entirely field-dependent: measurements, data, code, transcripts, field notes, source texts, images, instrument or archival records, derivations and proofs, protocols, specimens, or this field's equivalent. No kind is treated as better evidence than another.

Version. One posting of a manuscript, with its own permanent identifier. Each revision is a new version, and a certification names the version that was read. The mark stays on later versions, and where a later version is a substantial revision the page says so beside it.

Fuller detail on any of this: see the Certification Standard, which this form applies, and the Guide for Reviewers.