Scholarly peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field, before a paper describing this work is published in a journal, conference proceedings or as a book. The peer review helps the publisher (that is, the editor-in-chief, the editorial board or the program committee) decide whether the work should be accepted, considered acceptable with revisions, or rejected.
The practice of peer review is to ensure that only good science is published. It is an objective process at the heart of good scholarly publishing and is carried out by all reputable scientific journals. Our referees play a vital role in maintaining a high standards and all manuscripts are peer reviewed according to the following procedures.
Reviewers are requested to respect the confidentiality of any material sent to them, in accordance with the COPE and ICMJE recommendations linked to below. You should not reveal any details of the paper or its review, during or after the peer-review process, beyond those that are released by the journal. We therefore ask that you do not post your review, whether the manuscript is ultimately published or not, on any publicly accessible website.
- https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers
- http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/responsibilities-in-the-submission-and-peer-peview-process.html
Manuscript submission
When the authors submit a manuscript, it receives a tracking number. The Managing Editors perform an initial quality check to ensure that the paper is formatted correctly.
Initial manuscript evaluation
The Editor in Chief first evaluates all manuscripts. It is rare, but it is possible for a manuscript to be accepted at this stage. Manuscripts can be rejected at this stage in case they are insufficiently original, have serious scientific flaws, have poor grammar or English language, or are outside the aims and scope of the journal. If the decision is not to send the manuscript for review, the Editor in Chief communicates his decision to the corresponding author.
If the Editor in Chief decides that the paper is within the journal standards meeting the minimal criteria, the paper is directly passed on to at least 2 experts for review or to an Associate Editor who will be in charge of submitting the paper to a least two reviewer.
The journal employs the single blind reviewing, where the manes of the referees are hidden to the authors.
Referees selection
The journal's Editors select the referees matching the paper with the referee expertise and the database is constantly updated. Despite the journal has a large Editorial Board and many Associate Editors properly distributed in different section (topics), this process can take some time depending on the responsiveness and availability of the reviewer selected.
Referee reports
Referees are asked to evaluate whether: the manuscript contains new and significant information, the problem is significant and concisely stated, the methods are described comprehensively, the interpretation and conclusions are justified by the results, the references are adequate to other work in the field.
Language correction is not part of the peer review process, but referees may, if so wish, suggest corrections to the manuscript.
Duration of review process
Reviewers are given 14 days from acceptance to submit their report. The time required for the review process is dependent on the response of the referees. Should the referee’s reports contradict one another or a report is unnecessarily delayed, a further expert opinion will be sought. In rare cases for which it is extremely difficult to find a second referee to review the manuscript, or when the one referee’s report has thoroughly convinced the Editor, decisions at this stage to accept, reject or ask the author for a revision are made on the basis of only one referee’s report. In case of acceptance of the paper with (minor or major) revision, the corresponding author is asked to re-submit the revised paper within two weeks including a point-by-point reply to the comments of the reviewers.
Final report
A final decision to accept or reject or to further revise the manuscript will be sent to the corresponding author along with any recommendations made by the referees, and may include verbatim comments by the referees. Referees advise the Editor, who is responsible for the final decision to accept or reject the article. The Editor decision is final.
Authors can monitor the status of their paper during the peer review process.
Each published article will report the date of article submission and the date of final acceptance. These informations will be available for each article in pdf and html format on the journal website (https://www.infezmed.it/journal) and in the repository PORTICO and PubMedCentral.
Becoming a referee for the journal
Referees are selected on the base of their own expertise and curriculum. The journal "Le Infezioni in Medicina" takes advantage of being the Official Journal of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases as this permits to select referees from a wide list of members.