For reviewers
The Reviewer is anonymous except when he/she desires to be known. The authors are always known.
The review process is strictly confidential and should be treated as such by Reviewers. As the Author may have chosen to exclude some people from this process, no one who is not directly involved with the manuscript (including colleagues and other experts in the field) should be consulted by the Reviewer unless such consultations have first been discussed with the Associate Editors. Reviewers must not take any confidential information they have gained in the review process and use it before the paper is published. Even after publication, unless they have the permission of the Authors to use other information, Reviewers may only use publicly published data (i.e., the contents of the published article) and not information from any earlier drafts.
A reviewer of a manuscript should judge objectively the quality of the manuscript and respect the intellectual independence of the authors.
When the Researcher is asked to review, he/she should accept when: a) is really competent in the field; b) there is no conflict of interest.
After accepting, the reviewer should conduct the revision process confidentially. It should be neither shown to nor discussed with others except, in special cases, persons from whom specific advice may be sought; in that event, the identities of those consulted should be disclosed to the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Geoethics and Social Geosciences.
Reviewers must provide their comments and decision about a manuscript by 1 months of their acceptance to reviewing the work.
In the revision process, the reviewer should be conscious of the Journal politics, making the report and taking the decision accordingly.
The peer review of each article concentrates on objective and technical concerns to determine whether the work has been sufficiently well conceived, structured and described.
The main points to check are:
- the originality of the work;
- the clearness of the objectives and arguments;
- the proper citation of previous works of other authors, dealing with the same subject and/or related to the work presented;
- if the language (English) is clear and unambiguous.
The revision consists in a written comment to be sent to the corresponding author, possibly indicating in a precise way where changes/clarifications to the text are needed and in case suggesting how to improve it. Responsible reviewers should avoid generic comments. If reviewers think necessary, can add further comment to Associate Editors (not open for authors).
The comments should not contain personally offensive phrases or generic sentences containing personal criticism to the authors. Reviewers should clearly express their opinion supported by objective arguments.
Reviewers should reject a manuscript contains poor presentation and/or poor language.
Reviewers should be alert to failure of authors to cite relevant work by other scientists. A reviewer should call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published paper or any manuscript submitted concurrently to another journal.
There are several types of possible reviewer’s decisions to be suggested to the Associate Editor:
- Accepted. No changes are needed by authors.
- Minor revision. The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given 1 month for minor revisions.
- Major revision. The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. Usually, only one round of major revisions is allowed. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within a suitable time frame, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.
- Rejection. In case the article has serious flaws, and/or makes no original significant contribution, no offer of resubmission to the journal is provided. If additional revisions are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further work have been conducted.