Guidance for peer reviewers | Become an Experimental Results reviewer | Peer Review Taxonomy

Guidance for peer reviewers

If we need your help with reviewing a manuscript, we will email you and ask you to accept or decline the invitation through our submission site. If you accept, you will be asked to complete a scorecard review. See example scorecard here, and more information below.

 Before writing your review you may find it helpful to browse our Instructions for Authors.

The screenshots referred to below are on the example scorecard.

Screenshot One:

• You can indicate whether you would like to get recognition for your review on Publons.
• We need your agreement to have your review published online with your name associated, and to make it available under a CC-BY open access licence.
• The three questions in the Overall Evaluation section need to be a ‘Yes’ for the paper to be suitable for publication.

Screenshot Two:

• Please rank the paper according to each of the following attributes. This doesn’t indicate whether or not it is suitable for publication, but can be used to guide the Reviewing Editor if the paper is being sent back to the author for revisions.
• We have weighted the questions for each of the subsections in terms of which elements we saw as being most important. An average score for each section will be listed on the website.

Screenshot Three:

• Please indicate whether the paper should be sent to a Statistical Editor for extra data validation.
• You will also need to sign the Conflict of Interest declaration, and detail any competing personal, professional or financial interests that could be perceived as an influence on evaluating the work under review, or confirming that no such competing interests exist by entering the response Reviewer declares none.
• Example wording for a Conflicts of Interest declaration is as follows: “Reviewer is employed at company B/owns shares in company D/ is on the Board of company E/is a member of organisation F/ has received grants from company H.” If no Conflicts of Interest exist, the declaration should state “Reviewer declares none”.

 

Screenshot Four:

• We need you to recommend a decision for the paper.
• You have the opportunity to include ‘Confidential comments for the Reviewing Editor’, detailing any concerns that you have about the manuscript that you don’t want the author to see.
• The Comments to the Author section enables you to detail points that require amending/clarification. These comments will be published online and as Experimental Results is open peer review, authors will know who has reviewed their work. Therefore, please do not make any comments that you do not wish the author (or the whole community) to see. There is a limit of 250 words for this section. We have kept this short as the journal does not require lengthy discussion around narrative or theories. The reviewer comments should focus on whether the paper is suitable for publication, and this length should enable the reviewer to comment on points for minor revision. If extensive changes are needed, the paper should be rejected for major revision. 

As Experimental Results papers are short, and we are aiming for fast publication, we are recommending that reviews be returned within one week where possible. Please do let us know if you need extra time, or if you are unavailable so that we can approach alternative reviewers.

We ask reviewers to help us ensure that experiments published in Experimental Results are scientifically credible and ethical. Reviewers should judge whether the experiment was well conducted and designed, and whether the data is valid. Experimental Results papers will not include theories or narrative discussion, so should not be judged on this basis. The editorial team will make the final decision to accept or reject a manuscript, based on the reviewers’ comments.

Becoming an Experimental Results reviewer

If you would like to become a reviewer for Experimental Results, please register at the journal’s ScholarOne site.

If you review papers for Experimental Results, you can claim a £150 discount on the APC, up to a maximum of 2 peer reviews (i.e. a maximum discount of £300) - if you are eligible, please indicate this in the relevant section of ScholarOne when submitting your paper.

Peer Review Taxonomy

Experimental Results and Cambridge University Press are participating in a pilot of STM's Working Group on Peer Review Taxonomy. 

Background statement: "STM, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, has recognised a need to identify and standardise definitions and terminology in peer review practices in order to help align nomenclature as more publishers use open peer review models. A peer review taxonomy that is used across publishers will help make the peer review process for articles and journals more transparent, and will enable the community to better assess and compare peer review practices between different journals."

Taxonomy:

• Identity transparency (during the peer review process itself): Single anonymized
• Reviewer interacts with: Editor
• Review information published: Review reports, Reviewer identities 

We would welcome your feedback on the Peer Review Taxonomy Pilot - please can you take the time to fill out this short survey.

Conflict of interest for reviewers

Reviewers must provide a conflict of interest declaration when submitting their review in ScholarOne, detailing any competing personal, professional or financial interests that could be perceived as an influence on evaluating the work under review, or confirming that no such competing interests exist by entering the response Reviewer declares none.

Example wording for a Conflicts of Interest declaration is as follows: “Reviewer is employed at company B/owns shares in company D/ is on the Board of company E/is a member of organisation F/ has received grants from company H.” If no Conflicts of Interest exist, the declaration should state “Reviewer declares none”.