(from "Ethical Guidelines for Publication in Journals and Reviews")

Referees have the following responsibilities:

- To treat the manuscript as confidential. The editor must be informed if the referee consults a colleague about the manuscript.

- To return/destroy/erase the manuscript and to inform the editor should they be unqualified to review the manuscript, or lack the time to review the manuscript, without undue delay.

- To judge the manuscript objectively and in a timely fashion. Referees should not make personal criticism in their reviews.

- To return the manuscript without review to the editor if there is a conflict of interest. Specifically, Referees should not review manuscripts authored or co-authored by a person with whom the referee has a close personal or professional relationship, if this relationship could be reasonably thought to bias the review.

- To explain and support their judgements so that editors and authors may understand the basis of their comments, and to provide reference to published work, where appropriate.

- To inform the editor of any similarity between the submitted manuscript and another either published or under consideration by another journal to the best of their knowledge.EuCheMS - Ethical Guidelines for Publication in Journals and Reviews EuCheMS - Incorporated as AISBL - Registered office Avenue E. Van Nieuwenhuyse 4, B-1160 Brussels - 2006

- To ensure that all unpublished data, information, interpretation and discussion in a submitted article remain confidential and not to use reported work in unpublished, submitted articles for their own research.

- To alert the editor if a manuscript contains plagiarised material or falsified data to the best of their knowledge.

- Not to retain or copy the submitted manuscript in any form; to comply with data protection regulations, as appropriate.

- To make known any conflicts of interest that might arise.