Reviewers Guide

1. Peer Review and Editorial Procedure

Peer review is an essential part of the publication process and it ensures that ANL maintains the highest quality standards for its published papers. All manuscripts submitted to our journals are strictly and thoroughly peer-reviewed by experts.

Immediately after submission, the journal’s Managing Editor will perform an initial check of the manuscript. A suitable academic editor will be notified of the submission and invited to check the manuscript and recommend reviewers. Academic editors can decide to continue with the peer review process, reject a manuscript, or request revisions before peer-review. In the case of continuing the peer review process, the Editorial Office will organize the peer review, which is performed by independent experts, and collect at least two review reports per manuscript. We ask authors for sufficient revisions (with a second round of peer review, when necessary) before a final decision is made. The final decision is made by an academic editor (usually the Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board Member of a journal or the Guest Editor of a Special Issue). Accepted manuscripts are then copy-edited and English-edited internally. 

 

2. Reviewers’ Profile and Responsibilities

The role of the reviewer is vital and bears a great responsibility in ensuring the integrity of the scholarly record. Every reviewer is expected to perform manuscript evaluation in a timely, transparent, and ethical manner.

3. Reviewers’ Benefits

Reviewing is often an unseen and unrewarded task, despite being crucial. We are striving to recognize the efforts of all our reviewers.

Reviewing for ANL journal brings the following benefits:

• For every manuscript reviewed, the reviewer may receive a discount voucher code entitling them to a reduction in the article processing charge (APC) of a future submission to any ANL journal. 
• The reviewers receive a personalized reviewer certificate.
• The reviewers are eligible to be considered for the “Outstanding Reviewer Awards”.
• The reviewers are included in the journal’s annual acknowledgment of reviewers if more than 20 reviewers assisted the journal in the previous year.
• Excellent reviewers may be promoted to Reviewer Board Members (subject to approval by the Editor-in-Chief).

General Guidelines for Reviewers

1. Invitation to Review

Manuscripts submitted to ANL journal are reviewed by at least two experts, who can be volunteer reviewers, members of the Reviewer Board or reviewers suggested by the academic editor during the preliminary check. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and to provide a recommendation to the external editor on whether a manuscript should be accepted, requires revisions, or should be rejected.

We ask invited reviewers to:

• accept or decline any invitations as soon as possible (based on the manuscript title and abstract);
• suggest alternative reviewers if an invitation must be declined;
• request a deadline extension as soon as possible in case more time is required to provide a comprehensive report.

2. Potential Conflicts of Interest

We ask reviewers to declare any potential conflicts of interest and email the journal Editorial Office if they are unsure if something constitutes a potential conflict of interest. Possible conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Reviewer works in the same institute as one of the authors;
• Reviewer is a co-author, collaborator, joint grant holder, or has any other academic link, with any of the authors within the past five years;

3. Review Reports

We have listed some general instructions regarding the review report for your consideration below.

To begin with, please consider the following guidelines:

• Read the whole article as well as the supplementary material, if there is any, paying close attention to the figures, tables, data, and methods.
• Your report should critically analyze the article as a whole but also specific sections and the key concepts presented in the article.
• Please ensure your comments are detailed so that the authors may correctly understand and address the points you raise.

4. Rating the Manuscript

During the manuscript evaluation, please rate the following aspects:

• Novelty: Is the question original and well-defined? Do the results provide an advancement of the current knowledge?
• Scope: Does the work fit the journal scope*?
• Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses carefully identified as such?
• Quality: Is the article written in an appropriate way? Are the data and analyses presented appropriately? Are the highest standards for presentation of the results used?
• Scientific Soundness: Is the study correctly designed and technically sound? Are the analyses performed with the highest technical standards? Is the data robust enough to draw conclusions? Are the methods, tools, software, and reagents described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results? Is the raw data available and correct (where applicable)?
• Interest to the Readers: Are the conclusions interesting for the readership of the journal? Will the paper attract a wide readership, or be of interest only to a limited number of people? (Please see the Aims and Scope of the journal.)
• Overall Merit: Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work advance the current knowledge? Do the authors address an important long-standing question with smart experiments? Do the authors present a negative result of a valid scientific hypothesis?
• English Level: Is the English language appropriate and understandable?

5. Overall Recommendation

Please provide an overall recommendation for the next processing stage of the manuscript as follows:

• Accept in Present Form: The paper can be accepted without any further changes.
• Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper can in principle be accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.
• Reconsider after Major Revisions: 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 ten days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.
• Reject: The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and the paper may be rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal.

Note that your recommendation is visible only to journal editors, not to the authors. Decisions on revisions, acceptance, or rejections must always be well justified.