Reviewer Guidelines

1. General Rules

1.1. Confidentiality and conflict(s) of interest: When agreeing to review a submitted manuscript, the reviewers must keep any element of the submitted manuscript confidential. Further, given that the authors and co-authors own the copyright of their manuscript (both submitted/unpublished and published), reviewers are not allowed to refer to, cite, or circulate any element of the submitted manuscript to colleagues, students, funding organizations, project partners, or to the general public, UNLESS the authors and co-authors grant specific permission to do so.

Reviewers are also requested to disclaim to the Associate Editor any conflict of interest they might have with the authors and co-authors of the submitted manuscript. In the case of an anonymous submission, reviewers are also invited to contact the Associate Editor if they suspect a conflict of interest(s) might exist between them and any of the authors or co-authors of the submitted manuscript.

1.2. Scope of the review and Respect: By agreeing to review a submitted manuscript, reviewers agree to focus their constructive criticism on the Science while refraining from commenting excessively on the quality of the English, as most authors and co-authors are non-native speakers. Constructive comments on the structure of the paper and the quality of the figures are welcome. Reviewers agree to remain respectful and professional to the authors and co-authors. Ad personam attacks are strictly forbidden. In case of abusive reviews, the Executive and Associate Editors can request such reviews to be amended by the reviewers before sending them to the authors and co-authors. If such reviews are deemed beyond the limit of decency, such reviews will be completely disregarded, and the reviewer(s) will be banned from Sedimentologika.

1.3. Time: Reviews for Sedimentologika are carried out by experts in the field but conducted voluntarily. Sedimentologika hopes that reviewers can carry out their duty within 28 days, with the possibility of asking for an extension. However, given the voluntary nature of the review process, if the reviewers’ schedule is busy for the following 28 days after receiving an invitation to review a manuscript, we strongly encourage solicited reviewers to decline the invitation as soon as possible to avoid a protracted review process.

2. Review Process

2.1. Be or not to be anonymous? 

Sedimentologika supports signed reviews to avoid anonymous bullying and build a fair, transparent, positive review process. However, signed reviews are not mandatory.

The editorial team reserves the right to disregard reviews deemed unconstructive and disrespectful and withhold them from the authors.

Reviewers displaying unethical behavior will be removed from the review process and will not be invited to review for Sedimentologika in the future.

2.2. Documents to attach to each review:

Reviewers should return the following document(s):

A letter addressed to the associate editor in charge of the manuscript and the authors of the manuscript, in which the reviewers explain:

• The central new knowledge provided by this manuscript
• Their recommendation for the manuscript to be:
  1. Accepted with no revisions
  2. Accepted with minor revisions
  3. Accepted with major revisions
  4. Rejected
     
     
• The reviewer should list and constructively argue their major comments and/or concerns concerning the submitted manuscript.
• The reviewer should list all the line-by-line comments, for example, as an annotated PDF version of the manuscript.
• The reviewers list all references cited in the review process.

Additional information concerning the review process can be found here. 

 

N.B.: the guidelines are subject to change as Sedimentologika evolves.