Questions tagged [peer-review]
On the evaluation of work (typically, a publication or grant proposal) by the author's peers. This includes: refereeing, which is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication in a journal or conference; peer evaluation of teaching skills; peer review of research grant proposals; and post-publication review of a book or article, as is common in the field of mathematics.
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Does a problem statement chapter contributes / addressing a research question by establishing a deeper problem understanding?
Considering a PhD thesis that use a problem statement chapter in the middle of the thesis. The reason for the chapter is that the required background information is only, fully available at this point....
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Do I need to mention an incompetent referee in Conflicts of Interest (or comment)?
Facts:
About 18 months ago I submitted a paper claiming the result previously published by Michael is false.
The first referee used details in Michael's paper to defend Michael's points, trying hard ...
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Apparent accusation of plagiarism in peer review
I recently received a peer review report from a journal. They rejected my paper for several reasons, the umbrella explanation is that my work is not suited for that journal. However, there was a ...
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Submit a paper even if you know it will be rejected
Your student is writing a paper and you think it will be rejected with a probability of 99%.
Your student would like to submit it anyway.
Would you submit it? Why?
More specifically:
Is it ok to ...
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Are experiments described in scientific papers *actually* peer-validated today?
Background: the answers and comments on this question prompted this question.
I know that when a new scientific theory is published there is a rush for people to devise experiment to prove or disprove ...
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4 weeks “with editor” normal? [duplicate]
I have submitted a math paper to an Elsevier journal. Before submitting it, I sent two separate polite emails to two editors (experts of the field) of the journal and asked them if they think my paper ...
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What to do if a journal becomes "inactive"?
We submitted an original article in January this year to a Hindawi journal. In March, we received the request for major revisions. All points were easy to address. The reviewer asked for some ...
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Series of simultaneous rejections, how to advise younger fellows
I myself work as a clinician-scientist. I work in a small group and oversee several students. The current situation involves one of them who is a PhD-candidate. She is bright, fast and hard-working. ...
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Revised manuscript for a long time [duplicate]
We have submitted a review to high-impact factor journal in Elsevier, and after 15 days only, the reviewing process has ended with major revision. We addressed the suggested point carefully and the ...
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Being a reviewer for a top Computer Science conference means, as a general rule, to have the possibility of attending for free?
Just wondering if, as a general rule, there is any "benefit" (e.g. free attendance) associated to being a PC member in Computer Science conferences
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Is it possible to become an editor for a journal in a field you don't have research experience in?
I have a PhD in Materials Science and have published quite a bit (10 papers in >4 Impact factor journals) on surface engineering topics.
I have left academia 2 years ago and have been working as a ...
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If someone reads my manuscript, makes helpful suggestions and I thank them at the end, have I now removed them from the pool of potential reviewers?
There's a senior researcher who literally "wrote the book" on the topic of a paper I'm writing. I'll draw from and cite the book but introduce some new things.
As I am new to this long-...
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Need clarification on the status of my manuscript in ScholarOne [duplicate]
I recently submitted a manuscript to a journal using the ScholarOne submission system. After the second round of review, the editor provided some minor language revisions, and all three reviewers had ...
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Are Ukrainian researchers currently able to review manuscripts?
Per title. There's a war going on in Ukraine, which presumably makes it hard to do research, especially if one is suffering from constant blackouts. If Ukrainian researchers are currently not able to ...
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Should I send a manual email as well as an autogenerated email to potential reviewers?
I am an editor for a math journal. When I select and invite a reviewer to referee a paper the journal's management software automatically writes and sends an email invitation to that reviewer.
For a ...
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I am reviewing a very bad paper - do I have to be nice?
I received a paper to review that I can only describe as very bad. Not only are there structural issues that anyone that has previously published a paper in a respectable journal should know to avoid (...
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Review invitation of an article that overly cites me and the journal
I was invited to review a paper for a well-known SAGE Journal in my field. The editor of the journal invited me specifying that “I was highly recommended as a reviewer” by the authors.
The review is ...
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What to do if a book is in peer review for 9 months without a decision?
If a book (full-text research monograph) has been under peer review for 9 months and there is still no decision, what should I do? Would it be counterproductive to press the editor to make a decision?
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AE: Not Assigned, Under Review -> AE: Not Assigned, Submitted
I submitted a paper to an IEEE journal two months ago. The status changed to: "AE: Not Assigned, Under Review" after about 4 weeks and now recently it changed to "AE: Not Assigned, ...
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Motivation of a paper from referee reports
I have been working on an article (in mathematical economics) for some time now and received many comments from referee reports on the use of a functional form that is commonly used in the literature ...
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What category of peer-reviewed journals are more receptive to the idea of Conceptual Review Articles? [closed]
Given my personal experience, it boils down to the task of finding an open-minded editor/journal.
"Conceptual Papers: can bridge existing theories in interesting ways, link work across ...
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Can I improve a paper peer-review using ChatGPT?
Can I improve a paper peer-review using ChatGPT?
The goal is not to generate content. This is to improve my review of a conference paper in terms of harmful content moderation (things that authors ...
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Is there any custom to thank the editor of a journal?
I am a PhD student in mathematics. Recently I received back a request for revision of an article I had submitted to a journal. The referee made several good suggestions; the chief editor also provided ...
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Can I accept a review invitation after prior email contact with the author?
A few weeks ago, we (2 authors) published a hypothesis paper in the medical sciences.
Some days after the manuscript was published online, a researcher wrote me and asked for the full text. I did not ...
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What should you do if suspect your grant submission was plagiarized by a reviewer?
I submitted a grant a few years back to a major UK research council. It was rejected at the time. Since then I was funded to do some/ part of the work has been funded by another council and I'm ...
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What does it mean to state my opinions impersonally and objectively
I am writing a review for a journal. In the instructions, it contains the following quote:
"Your comments may be forwarded in their entirety to the author by the Review Editor, so state your ...
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What do I do if I'm unqualified to referee an article? [duplicate]
I met someone at a conference and we had a good conversation. We emailed after for a bit. He is the associate editor of a reasonably well respected journal. He asked me to referee a paper and I just ...
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Should I contact editor to inquire about the revised manuscript? [duplicate]
I submitted a revised manuscript on 19/2/2023. The paper changed to With Editor after few days (2 times) and changed to Under review on 10/3/2023 after I sent an inquiry about the status (this time, ...
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14 Days given for a revision in Scientific Reports
I wanted to know if giving a deadline of 14 days for a revision is normal for a journal like Scientific Reports? In my decision letter, the reviewers have called my work novel.
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Reviewing a paper written by an editor of the journal - am I really anonymous?
I was recently asked to review a paper for a (reputable) journal in mathematics.
This journal follows a single-blinded peer review process (which is quite standard in math). Reviewers are not revealed ...
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What is the purpose of the “Comments only to the editors” section in peer reviews?
What is the purpose of the “Comments only to the editors” section in peer reviews? It seems lack of transparency to me. What couldn’t you possibly tell the authors?
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How long does Springer give reviewers to peer-review an original book?
It can take months for articles in journals. But a proportional amount of time would make it years for a book, so that cannot be it. Does anyone have a ballpark recent figure for a 90,000 word ...
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What factors delay a final decision in the editorial process
After completion of peer review, the associate editor usually sends his recommendation to the editor-in-chief of a journal. The editor-in-chief is the one to take the final decision.
On this forum I ...
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What can/should I do when finding several flaws in a published paper that I have not authored?
I recently read a paper that was full of small errors that should have been pointed out during peer review but very obviously hadn't. Issues like the following
insufficient information in the methods ...
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Article Screening Without Formal Refereeing [duplicate]
I lately received an email from the editor-in-chief of a journal to which I submitted a paper draft last week, informing me that my submission has been rejected. What surprised me is not the rejection,...
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Does collecting some peer-reviewed articles in a "self-published" book promote it to a valuable scholarly book?
I have two scholarly books self-published in the field of physics. However, some parts of my books have previously been published in peer-reviewed journals and the editors of my books have academic ...
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What leverage does an author have when he receives extremely short review reports that look like a joke?
This is cross-disciplinary conceptual research on existing engineering solutions that could be employed for the new industry, 10-15 years from now. These ideas about future tasks are discussed in ...
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Refereeing an arXiv preprint
I accepted a request to referee a mathematics paper (available as an arXiv preprint long before it was submitted), but haven't started to write a report yet. Before receiving the referee request I'd ...
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How do mathematics journals get reviewers for a very new theory?
Nowadays, getting reviewers is a challenging task for many pure mathematics journals. How would an editor be able to find a reviewer for a very new theory that nobody has worked on yet?
If the author ...
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partial rejection? [duplicate]
I submitted a manuscript and the review was kind of mixed.
There are two reviewers, one said accept with minor revision, the other one did not say "reject this" but it seemed that he ...
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When multiple editors make a decision on a paper, is it normal to not reveal their names to each other?
I recently handled a paper where the peer review process ended with two minor revision reviews and two reject reviews. The disagreement was pretty fundamental - the two reviewers recommending ...
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Would reviewers verify the articles that my manuscript is based on?
I have written a manuscript which is based on some results of a preprint. I have submitted it to a journal and it is under review. Will the reviewers also verify the results of the preprint?
One thing ...
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New reviewers for revise & resubmit papers
I know that journals approach the second round review for a revise-and-resubmit paper differently. Sometimes, new reviewers are assigned. I find this kind of case very unfair to an author. We all know ...
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Suspicious referee report, are "suggested citations" from a paper mill?
Our paper contains a small bit of application of graph theory to something related to biophysics. A referee claims that we should mention other applications of graph theory to biophysics in the ...
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Editorial decision with only one referee report [duplicate]
In an Elsevier journal, after some long time, I looked at the status of my paper on the tracking system and I realized that one of the two reviewers did not even accept the review invitation. One of ...
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Is my paper doomed if even the top journal in the field cannot find reviewers?
In February last year, I submitted a manuscript to a well-known Q1 BMC Journal in my (very narrow and small) field. The editor asked for some direct revisions after one week. We resubmitted the ...
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Do mega-journals (e.g. Scientific Reports, BMJ Open, Sage Open, ...) have longer peer review durations?
We recently discussed mega journals (PLOS One, Scientific Reports, SAGE OPEN, BMJ OPEN, ...) in our group. One member argued that said journals have longer peer review and processing times than field-...
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I submitted an article to a too high-ranking journal, should I cancel?
I am a Postdoc, recently I submitted my first single-author publication (physics). I had one journal in mind and briefly discussed the idea with several seniors, and nobody really objected. Now I ...
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Being a reviewer for a conference I found the exact same claim of my last year paper that got rejected
Last year, I submitted a paper to the conference XX'22 in January. We made an Arxiv preprint.
And the paper got rejected. We got very good reviews, except there were some imprecisions that we needed ...
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How to handle situation in which the article has been "Awaiting reviewer assignment" for 5 months?
I submitted an article 5 months ago to a journal. Since then, the article has been jumping between "Waiting for Reviewer Assignment" and "Contacting Potential Reviewers" (10 ...
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