Trail Stop 10: Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers

Becoming an Excellent Peer Reviewer: A Writer’s Camp Learning Trail

Leslie H. Nicoll, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN

Writer’s Camp Director

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Integrity and trust are the cornerstones of peer review.

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When you agree to review a manuscript, you are entrusted with confidential work, asked to provide objective feedback, and expected to act professionally throughout the review process. Authors trust you to evaluate their work fairly and to protect unpublished ideas, data, and arguments. Editors rely on you to provide thoughtful, unbiased assessments that help guide editorial decisions. Ethical reviewing therefore serves not only individual authors and editors, but also the credibility of scholarly publishing as a whole.

Most reviewers approach these responsibilities with professionalism and good intentions. Still, situations arise that require careful judgment: a possible conflict of interest, a manuscript that overlaps with your own work, a request to consult a colleague, a tempting use of artificial intelligence (AI), or the discovery that a manuscript looks familiar from another journal. You do not need to handle these situations alone. The ethical response is to pause, protect confidentiality, and if necessary, ask the editor how to proceed.

This Trail Stop examines the core ethical responsibilities you take on as a peer reviewer: maintaining confidentiality, recognizing and disclosing conflicts of interest, providing professional and constructive feedback, using AI responsibly, and responding appropriately when you have reviewed a manuscript before, but for a different journal. These responsibilities help you contribute to a peer review system that is fair, trustworthy, and useful to authors, editors, and readers.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is one of your most important ethical responsibilities as a peer reviewer. Authors submit manuscripts with the expectation that their work will be seen only by the editor and invited reviewers until an editorial decision has been made. That expectation allows authors to share new ideas, original research, and innovative approaches without concern that their work will be disclosed, circulated, or used before publication.¹

As a reviewer, you may receive early access to emerging evidence or new scientific ideas. That access can be intellectually rewarding, but it also creates an obligation. You should treat a manuscript under review as a privileged communication between the authors, editors, and reviewers.¹ As a reviewer, you should not:

• Share the manuscript with colleagues, students, trainees, or collaborators without the editor’s permission.
• Discuss the manuscript, its findings, or its authorship with others.
• Use unpublished ideas, data, methods, figures, or interpretations in your own work.
• Save, distribute, upload, or circulate manuscript content outside the journal’s review system.

These responsibilities apply in single-anonymous, double-anonymous, and open peer review models. Even when identities are known or review reports may later be published, you should treat the submitted manuscript as confidential unless the journal’s policy clearly states otherwise.

Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest exists when your judgment could be influenced, or reasonably appear to be influenced, by another relationship, commitment, belief, or interest. The appearance of a conflict matters because peer review depends on trust. If an author, editor, or reader could reasonably question your independence, the editor needs that information before deciding whether you should proceed.

You should decline a review invitation, or ask the editor for guidance, when you have a conflict such as:

• A close personal relationship with an author.
• Recent or ongoing professional collaboration with an author.
• Shared institutional affiliation or supervisory relationship.
• Financial interests connected to the manuscript’s topic or outcome.
• Strong intellectual rivalry, public disagreement, or prior involvement with the work.

Keep in mind that staff in the editorial office do not necessarily know who you work with or your professional colleagues. The first three bullets in the list above could all occur simply because the editor or managing editor were not aware of an association you have with the author. It is always best to err on the side of caution. When in doubt, disclose the situation to the editor and let the editor decide. Transparency protects your credibility and gives the editor the information needed to manage the review process fairly.

Professional and Constructive Conduct

Ethical reviewing is not only about avoiding misconduct. It is also about doing the ordinary work of review with care. You can recommend rejection and still be constructive. You can identify serious flaws and still write in a way that respects the author’s effort and dignity.

Professional conduct includes:

• Using a respectful, specific, and evidence-based tone.
• Explaining major concerns clearly enough that the author and editor can understand their significance.
• Separating essential revisions from optional suggestions.
• Staying within your expertise and naming limits when appropriate.
• Submitting the review on time or promptly requesting an extension.

The goal is not to soften legitimate critique but rather, to make critique useful. A strong review helps the editor arrive at a decision and helps the author understand what would strengthen the work, even when the manuscript is not accepted. And remember: be careful what you write—you do not want to be “Reviewer 2”!²

You should also assume that your author-facing comments may be returned exactly as you wrote them. Guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) emphasizes that journals should have clear policies for editing reviews and that editors should not change the substance of reviewer comments in ways that misrepresent the reviewer. In practice, many journals transmit reviewer comments verbatim or with only limited editorial screening. That means your review should be written as a professional document from the start: clear, fair, specific, and free of wording you would not want the author to read.³

Guidance From Publication Ethics Organizations

Publication ethics organizations emphasize many of the same core principles: confidentiality, objectivity, transparency about conflicts of interest, respectful communication, and protection of unpublished work. COPE guidance is often used by journals and publishers when developing peer review policies, and recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) similarly emphasize that you must protect confidential manuscript material and disclose relationships or activities that could affect your role in the review process.^1,4

For you as a reviewer, the practical lesson is simple: follow the journal’s instructions, disclose uncertainty early, and avoid using information from a manuscript for personal advantage. Ethical reviewing is not a private side conversation between reviewer and manuscript; it is part of a larger system of editorial accountability.

Artificial Intelligence and Peer Review

Generative AI has made reviewer ethics more complicated. AI tools can assist with language, organization, literature discovery, and summarization in many settings, but peer review involves confidential material and human judgment. You remain responsible for the scientific assessment you submit. AI cannot replace your expertise, accountability, or independent evaluation.

Unless the journal explicitly permits it and confidentiality can be protected, you should not:

• Upload a submitted manuscript, abstract, figures, tables, data, or reviewer instructions into a public AI tool.
• Ask an AI system to generate the substance of a peer review.
• Share confidential manuscript content with any tool whose data-retention, training, or sharing practices are uncertain.
• Rely on AI-generated claims, citations, or judgments without independent verification.

Some journals may allow limited, supportive AI use, such as improving the language or structure of a review report, provided that the manuscript content is not shared and you remain in control. Other journals may prohibit AI use in peer review more broadly. Because policies vary and continue to change, check the journal’s instructions before using AI in any part of the review process.⁵

Understanding Large Language Models and Confidentiality

Large language models (LLMs) differ in how they store, retain, reuse, and protect user inputs. Some enterprise or private systems may promise not to train on submitted content; other tools may retain prompts, share data with service providers, or use inputs to improve models. These differences are not always obvious at the moment of use.

For that reason, the safest default is to avoid placing confidential manuscript content into AI tools unless the journal has authorized that use and the tool’s privacy terms clearly protect the content. Maintaining confidentiality is your primary responsibility.

Do Reviewers Ever Steal Ideas From Manuscripts?

The possibility of idea theft is one reason confidentiality matters so much. Reviewers are sometimes in a position to see unpublished arguments, methods, data, or interpretations before anyone else in the field. The ethical rule is clear: you must not use the author’s unpublished material for your own advantage.

Documented cases of reviewers stealing ideas or content do occur, but they appear to be rare compared with broader and more visible problems such as plagiarism, fabricated data, fake peer review, and paper-mill activity.⁶ They are also difficult to count. If a reviewer quietly develops a similar project after seeing a manuscript, the problem may never lead to a published retraction, and journals or institutions may handle complaints confidentially.

Retraction Watch and studies using the Retraction Watch database cover plagiarism and compromised peer review extensively, but direct reviewer theft from confidential manuscripts is less visible as a category. That does not make the risk unimportant. It means reviewers should treat unpublished work with special care, and authors should be able to trust that reviewers will not take advantage of privileged access.⁶

What If You Receive a Manuscript You Reviewed for Another Journal?

Occasionally, you may receive a manuscript that seems familiar from a previous review for another journal, especially when a rejected manuscript has been revised and submitted elsewhere. This situation does not automatically mean you must decline, but it does require care.

If this happens, it is appropriate to:

• Notify the editor that you previously reviewed a similar or earlier version.
• Ask whether the editor would still like you to proceed.
• Focus any review on the current version of the manuscript.
• Maintain confidentiality about the prior journal and prior review process.

You should avoid:

• Naming the previous journal.
• Sharing details from the previous review or editorial decision.
• Assuming the manuscript has not changed and automatically declining the review.
• Telling the authors, directly or indirectly, that the work was rejected elsewhere.

Each submission should be evaluated on the version currently before the journal. Your professional transparency helps the editor decide how best to proceed while maintaining confidentiality across journals.

Conclusion

Ethical reviewing is a form of stewardship. You are asked to protect work that is not yet public, judge it fairly, disclose limitations or conflicts, and communicate criticism in a way that serves the editorial process. These responsibilities may feel ordinary, but they are what make peer review possible.

An excellent peer reviewer does more than identify flaws. You protect trust: the author’s trust that unpublished work will be handled responsibly, the editor’s trust that your review is independent and useful, and the scholarly community’s trust that publication decisions are made through a fair process.

By maintaining confidentiality, disclosing conflicts, using AI cautiously, and acting with professionalism, you contribute to a peer review system that is both rigorous and humane. These responsibilities are central to becoming an excellent peer reviewer.

References

1. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Updated January 2026. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf
2. Kinnear B, Govender L, Church HR. How to be reviewer 2: Lessons in academic curmudgeonry. Medical Education. 2026;60(1):79-81. doi:10.1111/medu.15679
3. Committee on Publication Ethics. Guidelines: editing peer reviews. doi:10.24318/AoZQIusn
4. Committee on Publication Ethics. Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers
5. Elsevier. Generative AI policies for journals. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/generative-ai-policies-for-journals
6. Retraction Watch. Retraction Watch Database. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://retractionwatch.com/

Author: Leslie H. Nicoll

Reviewed and Edited by: Marilyn H. Oermann

Copyright © 2026: Writer’s Camp and Leslie H. Nicoll. CC-BY-ND 4.0

Citation: Nicoll LH. Trail stop 10: Ethical responsibilities of reviewers. The Writer’s Camp Journal. 2026; 2(3):10; doi: 10.5281/zenodo.21464077