Thank you for agreeing to review a manuscript for the IJRARE. Reviewing a manuscript written by a fellow scientist is a privilege. However, it is a time-consuming responsibility. Hence, IJRARE Editorial Board, authors, and audiences appreciate your willingness to accept this responsibility and your dedication. IJRARE operates a single blind review process. All submitted manuscripts will be initially assessed by the editor-in-chief for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. In so doing, IJRARE needs reviewers who can provide insightful and helpful comments on submitted manuscripts with a turnaround time of about 4 weeks. Maintaining IJRARE as a scientific journal of high quality depends on reviewers with a high level of expertise and an ability to be objective, fair, and insightful in their evaluation of manuscripts.
Before you accept or decline an invitation to review, consider the following questions:
- Does the article match your area of expertise? Only accept if you feel you can provide a high-quality review.
- Do you have a potential conflict of interest? Disclose this to the editor when you respond.
- Do you have enough time? Reviewing can be a lot of work – before you commit, make sure you can meet the deadline.
Manuscripts judged:
Manuscripts judged to be of potential interest to our readership are sent for formal review, typically to two reviewers. The editor then make a decision, based on the reviewers’ advice, from among several possibilities:
Manuscripts that fall into this category will fail to meet the criteria of novelty and appropriateness, may be poorly written or targeted for a different audience, or require such significant editing that the edit cannot reasonably occur in the timeframe several weeks the author is allotted for revision prior to the next review round. The reasoning for a decision of reject decision should be made clear in the reviewers’ comments. Authors should not be encouraged to resubmit papers that are irredeemable.
To accept the paper with no changes. This manuscript requires no additional reviews, although there may be some small fixes typos, etc. which the reviewers indicates must be corrected. This manuscript will, essentially, be published “as is” with no additional action by the reviewers.
To request major, required revisions that will facilitate a second full review cycle by the original reviewers. This manuscript, although meeting the criteria of novelty and appropriateness, is seriously flawed as to disclosure (either technical or literary or both), and requires a major rework by the author.
To accept the paper with minor but required changes, this manuscript meets the criteria of novelty and appropriateness, but requires a few fixes, usually of the technical variety (more than typos or grammatical corrections), which are considered to be quite minor, but which the Editor has determined he/she should review one last time prior to approving the manuscript for publication.
Reviewers’ responsibilities
If IJRARE’s Editor-in-Chief has invited you to review a manuscript, please consider the following:
- Reviewing manuscript critically but constructively and preparing detailed comments about the manuscript to help authors improve their work.
- Providing all required information within established deadlines.
- Suggesting alternative reviewers in case they cannot review the manuscript for any reasons.
- Reporting possible research misconducts.
- Reviewing multiple versions of a manuscript as necessary.
- Making recommendations to the editor regarding the suitability of the manuscript for publication in the journal.
- Declaring to the editor any potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authors or the content of a manuscript they are asked to review.
- Treating the manuscript as a confidential document.
- Not making any use of the work described in the manuscript.
- Not communicating directly with authors, if somehow they identify the authors.
- Not identifying themselves to authors.
- Not passing on the assigned manuscript to another reviewer.
- Ensuring that the manuscript is of high quality and original work.
- Informing the editor if he/she finds the assigned manuscript is under consideration in any other publication to his/her knowledge.
- Writing review report in English only.
- Authoring a commentary for publication related to the reviewed manuscript.
What should be checked while reviewing a manuscript?
- Novelty
- Originality
- Scientific reliability
- Valuable contribution to the science
- Adding new aspects to the existed field of study
- Ethical aspects
- Structure of the article submitted and its relevance to authors’ guidelines
- References provided to substantiate the content
- Grammar, punctuation and spelling
- Scientific misconduct
Best Regards,
Morteza Esmaeili
Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Railway Research (IJRARE)