For Reviewers

Members of the scientific research community are crucial to assess the rigor and high quality of scientific research, through peer review of articles submitted for consideration for publication in Scientific Letters. The editors of Scientific Letters greatly appreciate the invaluable contribution of reviewers to the quality of published research, and thank all reviewers for their time, comments, and constructive criticism.

Invited Reviewers

Reviewers are invited by mail sent by the Editorial Manager submission system, based on their expertise in the research areas of the manuscript under consideration, or on specific recommendations. The reviewers are informed on the title, the abstract of the manuscript, and the time frame of the report. They are invited to use a link to accept or decline. The reviewer has access to the manuscript only if he/she agrees to review the paper.

Please accept to review only if you have the expertise, time, and no conflict of interest. If you are unable to evaluate the paper, please provide us with suggestions for qualified reviewers.

Peer Review

Scientific Letters practices single blind peer review: the names of the reviewers are hidden from the author. The reviewers will be informed on the editorial decision, and will have access to the comments from the other reviewers. The reviewers’ identities are not revealed throughout the review process and beyond.

Confidentiality

All the review process is confidential. The abstract and the manuscript remain confidential until their publication. Reviewers are required to contact first the editor if they feel that additional advice from an expert would be helpful. The editor will check whether the expert is included in the list of reviewers excluded by the authors. Regardless, the originally invited reviewer is ultimately responsible for maintaining confidentiality of the manuscript, and for the content of the report.

Reviewing the Manuscript

The journal recommends COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

The main propose of the review is: i) to provide the editors with the information needed to reach a decision; and ii) to provide the authors with comments and suggestions that can strengthen their manuscripts so as to increase their chance to be accepted for publication in Scientific Letters.

The originality of the work, the adequacy of the methodological approach used, and the substantial evidence for its conclusions, are the main criteria to be followed to elaborate an objective report. When writing the report, we ask the reviewers to include the following key features:

  1. The main claims of the paper, their originality, their significance to the field, and whether they are supported by the presented data;
  2. The major criticisms (e.g. lack of novelty? insufficient experimental data? statistical analysis concerns? over-interpretation of the results? unfair contextualization of the findings? others?) and eventual recommendations to overcome them;
  3. Special concerns (e.g. ethics? conflict of interest? clarity of the manuscript? manuscript organization? unbalanced referencing of the pre-existing literature? others?).

Please note that reviewer reports are not edited by the journal editors, and are transmitted unchanged to the authors, irrespective of the editor opinion on their content. However, reports are edited to remove offensive language or information related to confidential or ethics issues.

Comments for Editors

Specific comments judged as inappropriate by the reviewers to be transmitted to the authors can be placed in the “Comments for Editors” section of the online submission system. They will not be revealed to authors.

Reviewing Revised Manuscripts

Revised manuscripts and authors’ response to reviewer comments are sent to the original reviewers for evaluation. Therefore, we request referees to agree to review future versions of the manuscripts. To avoid unproductive resubmission cycles, the editors will not send the revised manuscript to referees if no substantial attempt have been made by the authors to address the reviewers’ criticisms.

Reviewer Checklist

You may be interested in consulting this checklist to help you in “developing high quality referee reports and avoiding some of the common pitfalls”.

Reviewer Acknowledgements

Annually, the Scientific Letters will publish its acknowledgement to reviewers, including a list of names of reviewers, in recognition of their effort and care in maintaining the rigor and high quality of scientific research and helping the editors to reach the best decisions.

We will not publish the name of reviewers that do not wish to be included in the list.