Reviewer Guidelines

Manuscripts submitted to Acta Europeana Systemica are reviewed by at least two experts. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and to provide a recommendation to the journal editor:

  • Accept Submission: the paper is accepted without any further changes;
  • Revisions Required: the paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments and authors are given five days for minor revisions;
  • Resubmit for review: 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. 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;
  • Resubmit Elsewhere: the paper does not match at all with the editorial orientation or the topics covered in the journal;
  • Decline Submission: the article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and the paper is rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal;
  • See Comments: for all the other cases.

We ask invited reviewers to:

  • accept or decline any invitations quickly, based on the manuscript title and abstract;
  • suggest alternative reviewers if an invitation must be declined;
  • inform the journal editor if they hold a conflict of interests that may prejudice the review report, either in a positive or negative way;
  • inform the journal editor if there is scientific misconduct or fraud, plagiarism or any other unethical behavior related to the manuscript;
  • write a review on your own and provide a accurate, overall and constructive review report in a timely manner;
  • maintain a neutral tone and focus on providing constructive criticism that will help the authors improve their work;
  • make comments focused on the scientific content and specific enough for the authors to be able to respond;
  • request an extension in case more time is required to compose a report;
  • not to reveal their identity to the authors, either in their comments or in metadata for reports submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF format;
  • keep the content of the manuscript, including the abstract, confidential.

As part of the assessment, reviewers will be asked to rate:

  • Originality/Novelty: Is the question original and well defined? Do the results provide an advance in current knowledge?
  • Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses and speculations carefully identified as such?
  • Quality of Presentation: 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? Are the data robust enough to draw the conclusions? Are the methods, tools, software, and reagents described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results?
  • Interest to the Readers: are the conclusions interesting for the readership of the Journal and will the paper attract a wide readership?
  • Overall Merit: is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work provide an advance towards the current knowledge? Do the authors have addressed an important long-standing question with smart experiments?
  • English/French Level: Is the English/French language appropriate and understandable?

If necessary, a second round of peer-review could be organized.

Editorial process: