JMIR Publications offers "cascading peer-review" (also called "portable peer-review"), meaning that manuscripts and their peer-reviews can be transferred to other JMIR Publications journals.
What does this mean for authors?
Note that peer reviewers and/or the editor may suggest JMIR Publications journals as options for transfer. If the author(s) agree to a transfer using cascading peer-review, then the transfer must be approved by the Editor-in-Chief of the receiving journal. If not approved for transfer, then the article may continue to "cascade" to the next journal for consideration.
What does this mean for peer reviewers?
This means that as reviewer, you can suggest a transfer to another JMIR Publications journal if you feel the paper is better suited for another journal of the JMIR Publications portfolio (Which journals is JMIR Publications currently publishing?).
In the peer-review form (How does the JMIR peer-review form look like?), you will find a question on possible transfer to another journal.
Transfer suggestions may be a result of the topic of the paper (if it is narrow and of interest to specialists only, it may be better suited for another JMIR Publications journal), or impact (or lack of impact). The peer-review form also contains a question on suggested impact on a 1-10 scale, which will further help the editor to make a decision on cascading the manuscript.
Some JMIR Publications with higher ranking or impact factors (What is an Impact Factor?) may be more selective in what they publish. If you evaluate a manuscript and find it in principle publishable, but not strong enough for the target journal, then the peer reviewer can suggest another journal, instead of recommending a "reject" decision. Often, papers reporting preliminary, formative, or less in-depth results can still be converted into a formative research paper and transferred to JMIR Formative Research. Those that are essentially manuscripts reporting a protocol with little to no results should be transferred to JMIR Research Protocols (see: Why should I publish my protocol or grant proposal?).