Peer Review Process

All submitted manuscripts are reviewed by the editorial staff for adequacy of documentation, composition and adherence to the guidelines of Annals of Colorectal Research(ACRR). Manuscripts not submitted in accordance with these guidelines will be returned to the author for correction before beginning the review process. ACRR follows a double-blind peer-review process which means neither the authors, nor the reviewers will get to know each side. The manuscripts that are considered suitable for review are assigned to am associate editor who is an expert in the field and is assessed initially. Then the manuscript is sent to at least two external reviewers for evaluation. The reviewers are asked to assess the originality, scientific merit, design of the study including statistical analysis, professional interest and the overall quality of the manuscript. The reviewer may recommend accept as is or with revision. All the manuscripts are also subjected to plagiarism check and verifiction of the data. It is unusual for a manuscript to be accepted without revision. Two copies of the revised manuscript are returned to the Editors-in-Chief for further processing. The final decision is made by the EIC based on the reviewers comments and the associate editor recommendation. Those manuscripts that have conflicting peer-review results, are send for third or fourth external refree. All accepted manuscripts are subject to editing for clarity, accuracy and style. Currently, the primary peer-review process for those manuscripts submitted according to the journal’s guidelines takes at least 40 days.

 

 

 

An Editor or a Reviewer is able to accept/decline any new invitation. To do:

  1. Sign in to journal with “ Editor " or Reviewer" role
  2. Go to "New Manuscript". There you have 2 options:
    1. By "Agree", it will be assigned to your assignments.
    2. By "Decline", this will be returned to the role who invited you. In the case of a decline, please write your reason(s).

 Peer Review Policy and Process

"Peer review" as a judgment on an academic work may affect the whole work and life an academic person and is of the utmost goal of managing a journal.

Rules of External Peer Review:

  • All submitted manuscripts are subjected to the external peer review and editorial approval.
  • Articles will be sent to at least 3 independent reviewers in the related field.
  • Normally, the reviewers are blinded to the authors' identities and their affiliations while the associate editors have full access to them.
  • Authors are usually notified within 2-3 months about the acceptability of their manuscript.
  • Reviewers are selected based on their expertise within the topic area of the submission, and their purpose is to assist the authors and the journal by providing a critical review of the manuscript.
  • After receiving the reviewers’ comments, authors are requested to send the revised article and a copy of their reply to the reviewers including the comment and explaining the replies to the questions and the changes made to the revised version. The communication regarding a specific manuscript will be done only between the journal and the designated corresponding author.

Responsibility for the Reviewers

Based on the agreement with our reviewers, they are committed to these regulations:

  • Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
  • Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect their comments and decision.
  • Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
  • Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
  • Reviewers should also call to the Editor in Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
  • Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Different Types of Peer Review

There are three types of "Peer Review":

  1. Double-blind Peer Review System: Neither Reviewer nor author knows each other. In This system, a blond PDF will be sent to the reviewer and a reviewer is only able to see the text of the manuscript without knowing the names or affiliations.
  2. Single-Blind Peer Review System: In this method, reviewers know the authors while the name of reviewers are hidden from the authors.
  3. Open Peer Review: Readers and authors of the manuscript are able to see and read the reviewer's comments.

We believe that publishing our peer review reports could make a transparent and clear environment for all our efforts within a journal, but not all reviewers tend to publish their comments. 

Schema of Peer Review Process

Please see below diagram which shows the review process.

 

What is "Open Peer Review" process?

An "Open Peer Review" process is making the details of all review process (including reviewers, editors, and EICs comments) as "Public" as it is agreed by EIC, Authors, and reviewers. 

Types of reviewers in Open Peer review

  1. Signed-Reviewers: These reviewers agree to be declared with their names and affiliations in the public journal website.
  2. Anonymous-Reviewers: This type of reviewers are anonymous for the public but known for EIC while only their comments will be publicly available.

Advantages of "Open Peer Review" process

  1. More transparency, constructiveness and tactful comments of the peer review process: leads to an increase in the quality of reviews
  2. More motivations for all involved roles in the review process 
  3. Authors' satisfactions from the review process: Increases honesty between authors and reviewers
  4. Education of both authors and new students
  5. Prevents reviewers from following their individual agendas and leading to the detection of reviewers' conflicts of interests

A model of Peer Review process and contents of Open Peer Review Report

Here you may find a sample model of open peer review process in ACR.

 

 

How to Invite an Editor or a Reviewer?

To Invite an Editor or a Reviewer to do a review on a manuscript:

  1. Sign in to journal with "EIC" role (for inviting Editor) and “Editor " role (for inviting a reviewer).
  2. Click on new submissions and choose one manuscript.
  3. Below the table, "Select an option" to "Assign manuscript to editor" or” Assign manuscript to Reviewers".
  4. There are other options too. You can also choose one of them according to your decision.
  5. A list of all potential editor or reviewers is available on website.
  6. If the EIC/Editor has any comments, he can find a box to write his comments.
  1. Invitation Emil is editable

 

 

 

How to do a Peer Review?

 

How to submit review comments?

Reviewers or editors are able to submit their decisions. To do:

  1. Sign in to the journal > Select the “Editor or Reviewer” role from the right column.
  2. Click the “New manuscript" > Accept invitation .
  3. Go to assigned manuscript.
  4. "Reviewers' Guideline" are available in this page. Based on one of the guidelines, please download PDF file or other related word files, read them, write peer review comments in a simple word file and then paste them into 2 boxes available in this page:
  5. Public Comments: Reviewers are able to write their public comments on this page. Public comments are visible for all authors.
  6. Confidential comments are not visible for authors. Only EIC will be able to see it.
  7. There are different types of decisions that help you to categorize your own decision and comments including Major, Minor, Accept, Reject.
  8. File Upload: Editor or Reviewer is able to upload any file related to the review of the manuscript during the review process by clicking the “Attach file” > “Select File”.  

 

Editor is able to edit all reviewers comments

The comments written by a reviewer could be corrected by editor only if the status of manuscript is in "Waiting for Editor". 

 

 

Editor: Role and Responsibilities

  • ​ Editor is an assistant role for EIC. Editor 's responsibilities are:
    • Inviting Reviewers, and
    • Submitting comments on review process of each manuscript.
  • Editor is also able to mark manuscript's review as Insufficient and send it back to the state in which manuscript needs reviewer again.
  • Editor can see a list of reviewers and their status, decision and their time frame. In order to see a detailed view of each review, Editor is able to click on “See Review” button and see the complete review form of each reviewer. Editor can uninvited reviewers, send reminders or see other reviewers’ comments via "Peer review" table.