A practical framework for assessing scientific article quality: Guidance for authors, editors, and reviewers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58712/jerel.v5i3.231Keywords:
scientific article quality, quality assessment, scholarly writing, research reporting, methodological rigor, transparency, publication integrity, reporting guidelines, peer reviewAbstract
The quality of a scientific article is determined not only by the completeness of the manuscript’s structure, but also by the coherence of the argumentation, methodological rigor, transparency of reporting, quality of evidence, and consistency between findings, interpretations, and conclusions. Various reporting guidelines have been developed to support research reporting for specific approaches and designs, but they have limited scope and do not directly provide a framework for evaluating all sections of a manuscript. This article aims to develop a practical guide for assessing and improving the quality of scientific articles for authors, editors, and reviewers. The framework presented organizes the manuscript into front matter, main text, and end matter, and then formulates evaluation criteria for the Title, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Author Statements and Declarations, and References. In the Methods section, four principles of synthesis, including structured, transparent, accessible, and reproducible, are used to organize reporting requirements based on various methodological approaches and strategies. At the overall manuscript level, cross-cutting quality criteria are used to assess relevance, structural and argumentative coherence, methodological rigor, transparency, quality of evidence, contribution, citation integrity, and consistency across components. This framework is used in conjunction with design-specific reporting guidelines to assess the completeness of reporting in line with the characteristics of the research design. This framework is not intended as a universal standard or a single-score rating system, but rather as an evaluative approach that can be adapted to the type of article, research design, form of evidence, scientific field, and journal requirements. Thus, the presented framework can help identify manuscript weaknesses, improve readiness prior to submission, and support a more systematic evaluation of articles during the editorial and peer-review processes.
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