A Guide for Reviewers

About The EMBO Journal

The EMBO Journal is an international print and online publication dedicated to providing full-length, rapidly published papers in all areas of molecular biology. The Journal is owned and run by the European Molecular Biology Organization and is editorially independent of its publisher.

• Criteria for publication
• The review process
• Selecting referees
• Upon receiving a manuscript to referee
• Confidentiality
• Writing a report
• Editing referee reports
• Timing
• Conflicts of interest
• Publication policy and ethical considerations
• Feedback to referees
• Navigating the System
• Review Manuscript
• Getting help

The EMBO Journal receives many more submissions than it can publish. Manuscripts are therefore critically evaluated for compliance with the following criteria:

• novelty
• broad biological significance
• importance to the specific field
• strong evidence for the conclusions that are drawn

All submitted manuscripts are carefully assessed by the editorial staff for their potential suitability. The abstract or a PDF file of manuscripts may also be sent to Advisory Editorial Board members for further input toward this decision. To save authors and referees time, only those manuscripts judged most likely to meet our editorial criteria are sent out for formal review.

Manuscripts that are sent for formal review typically go to three referees. Based on their advice, the editor decides to: accept the manuscript, with or without minor revision; invite the authors to revise the manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached; or reject the manuscript, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems.

Referees may recommend a particular course of action in their confidential comments to the editor, but should bear in mind that the editors may have to make a decision based on conflicting advice. Furthermore, editorial decisions are not a matter of counting votes or numerical rank assessments, but rather are based on an evaluation of the strengths of the arguments raised by each referee and by the authors. The most useful referee reports, therefore, are those that set out clear, substantiated arguments and refrain from recommending a course of action in the comments directed to the authors.

For papers submitted from January 2009 onwards, The EMBO Journal will make the editorial process transparent for all accepted manuscript, by publishing as an online supplementary document all correspondence between authors and the editorial office relevant to the decision process, as well as the overall timeline of the editorial and publishing process. Internal communications and informal consultations between editors, editorial advisors or referees, as well as confidential comments of the reviewers will remain excluded from these policies. Likewise, referee anonymity will be strictly maintained. Reviewers should however note that their comments directed to the authors as well as the authors' point-by-point responses will be included in this document. Care should thus be taken to avoid factually incorrect statements, and to thoroughly justify arguments in favour or disfavour of any given study. We also encourage referees to be as clear as possible about what revision will be required for a manuscript to become acceptable (subject to the results obtained). Ideally, it should be apparent to the author and the editor how to proceed without need for additional consultation.

Referee selection is critical to the review process, and our choice is based on many factors, including expertise, reputation, specific recommendations, and our previous experience with the referee. We do not use referees who have been excluded by the authors, and avoid using referees who have repeatedly provided reports of low quality or strongly delayed reports. We normally send manuscripts to referees only after having contacted them about the possibility first, and expect referees to treat even this initial request as confidential.

To avoid unnecessary delays in processing manuscripts, please do the following immediately upon receipt of a manuscript for review:

• check the quality of the PDF-file/hardcopy figures sent to you
• double-check the deadline to ensure that there have been no misunderstandings regarding timing, and contact the editorial office immediately if you anticipate any difficulties in meeting it
• skim the manuscript and consider whether there might be a conflict of interest for you (with the authors, their institution, their funding sources) and whether you can judge the article impartially
• read the editor's letter carefully and be sure to note any points specific to the manuscript that the editor may have requested your opinion on

Referees should treat the review process as being strictly confidential, and should keep the following guidelines in mind:

• manuscripts refereed for The EMBO Journal should not be discussed with anyone not directly involved in the review process.
• if colleagues are consulted, they should be identified to the editors. Should you be unable to complete the review yourself and would like to pass the task on to senior coworkers, please identify them to the editors beforehand and justify your choice. If agreed, the editors would then reassign the review task to that person, allowing them to take credit and eliminating ambiguities about the source of the review.
• if experts from outside the referee's own laboratory are consulted, referees should check with the editors beforehand to avoid involving anyone who may have been excluded by the editor or the authors.
• referees should, as a rule, not disclose their identities to the authors or to other colleagues since they may be asked to comment on the criticisms of other referees and may then find it difficult to be objective. Should they feel strongly about making their identities known to the authors, they should do so via the editor. We strongly disapprove of any attempt by authors to determine the identities of referees or to confront them, and encourage referees to neither confirm nor deny any speculation in this regard.

The primary purpose of referee reports is to provide the editors with the information that they need to reach a decision, but they should also instruct the authors on how to strengthen their manuscript if revision is a possibility. Referees are asked to complete a summary sheet for the submission of confidential comments to the editor, but should also provide a summary that can be directly transmitted to the authors along with the more specific comments. We recommend the following division of the report:

Comments for transmission to the authors

Referees are asked to maintain a positive and impartial, but critical, attitude in evaluating manuscripts. Criticisms should remain dispassionate; offensive language is not acceptable. As far as possible, a negative report should explain to the authors the weaknesses of their manuscript, so that they can understand the basis for a decision to ask for revision or to reject the manuscript. Similarly, positive reports should explain the reasons for why a study would be seen as an important advance of wider biological significance. Please keep in mind that comments to the authors will be included and published in the 'editorial proceedings' supplementary file in case of publication, even if they may have been pertinent only to an initial version of the eventually published manuscript.

The ideal report should include:

• an initial paragraph that summarises the major findings and the referee's overall impressions, as well as highlighting major shortcomings of the manuscript.
• specific numbered comments, which may be broken down into major and minor criticisms if appropriate (numbering facilitates both the editor's evaluation of the manuscript and the authors' rebuttal to the report).

The report should answer the following questions:

• what are the major claims and how significant are they?
• are the claims novel and convincing?
• are the claims appropriately discussed in the context of earlier literature?
• is the study of interest to more than a specialised audience?
• does the paper stand out in some way from the others in its field?
• are there other experiments that would strengthen the paper?

For manuscripts that may merit further consideration, it is also helpful if referees can provide advice on the following points where appropriate:

1. how the clarity of the writing might be improved (without necessarily going into specific details of spelling and grammar)
2. how the manuscript might be shortened
3. how to do the study justice without overselling the claims
4. how to represent earlier literature more fairly
5. how to improve the presentation of methodological detail so that the experiments can be reproduced
6. the submission of supplementary data on the The EMBO Journal web site to enhance the presentation (depositing, for example, crystallographic information, source code for modelling studies, microarray data, detailed methods, mathematical derivations, long tables and movies).

This author report should not include a recommendation regarding publication, which is regarded as confidential information since the final decision regarding acceptance, revision or rejection rests with the editor.

Confidential evaluation

The manuscript should be rated, either on the form provided or in an e-mail, according to the following:

Additional comments to the editor might include:

• a definite recommendation regarding publication
• an assessment of how much any suggested additional experiments would improve the manuscript, and of how difficult they would be to complete within a reasonable timeframe (3 months).In particular, referees should clearly indicate which experiments will be essential for a manuscript to become acceptable (subject to the results obtained).
• in cases where the manuscript is unacceptable in its present form, an opinion about whether the study is sufficiently promising to encourage a new submission in the future.
• suitability of the title of the manuscript and, if applicable, suggestions for an alternative title.
• advice on whether the manuscript is outstanding and worth highlighting.
• in case that revision can be recommended, an indication whether the referee considers it important to see an eventual revised version.

As a matter of policy, we do not suppress or modify referee reports. On rare occasions, however, we may edit a report where the referee has made an inadvertent but obvious factual mistake, or to remove offensive language or comments that reveal confidential information. In cases where the overall recommendation or opinion appears to be insufficiently mirrored in the comments to the authors, we may ask the referee about the possibility of partial rephrasing. We further ask referees to avoid saying anything that may cause needless offence, but also expect authors to recognise that criticisms are not necessarily unfair or able to cloud the editor's judgement simply because they are expressed in robust language.

The EMBO Journal is committed to rapid editorial decisions and publication as efficiency in this process is a valuable service both to our authors and the scientific community as a whole. We therefore ask that referees respond promptly or inform us if they anticipate a significant delay, which allows us to keep the authors informed and, where necessary, find alternative referees.

We honour the authors' request to exclude certain individuals as referees due to potential conflicts of interest. In rare cases where an unreasonably high number of experts is excluded, we may however request a more restricted exclusion list from the authors. We also try to avoid referees who: have recent or ongoing collaborations with the authors, have commented on drafts of the manuscript, are in direct competition, have a history of dispute with the authors, or have a financial interest in the outcome. Because it is not possible for the editors to know of all possible biases, however, we ask referees to draw our attention to anything that might affect their report, including commercial interests, and to decline to referee in cases where they feel unable to be objective. We do not find it necessary to exclude referees who have reviewed a paper for another journal; the fact that two journals have independently identified a particular person as well qualified to referee a paper does not decrease the validity of her/his opinion in our view.

In spite of our best efforts to identify breaches of publication policy or ethical conduct, such as plagiarism or author conflict of interest, the referees who are more familiar with the field are more likely to recognise such problems and should alert the editors to any potential problems in this regard, either by e-mail or using the confidential comments to the editor.

Once a final decision on a manuscript has been reached, it is our policy to inform all referees of that decision and to send copies of the other referee reports. Referees who find that their recommendations have been overruled should realise that this does not imply any lack of confidence in their judgement. It is not uncommon for experts to disagree and, in the absence of a consensus, the editors must still reach a decision one way or the other. When we ask referees to re-review a manuscript that has been revised in response to their criticisms, we also send them copies of the all the original comments of all reviewers.

When you first log into the system, you will be taken to your "Home" page. It will have different catagories of tasks. If you are required to perform a pending action item, there will be a red arrow next to a manuscript link. After clicking on this link, you will be presented with a "Manuscript" screen containing:

• Detailed Information about a specific manuscript.
• Links to the manuscript and associated figures/images.
• A list of "Manuscript Tasks" or links allowing you to:
  • Accept/Decline Reviewer Position.
  • Check Status
  • Review Manuscript

(Not all links will be present all the time. Only the applicable links will be visible.)

If there are no red arrows visible on the "Home" page, then you are finished. There is no pending work you need to worry about.

After logging into the system, pressing on a manuscript link preceded by a red arrow, you will be presented with a "Manuscript" screen as described above. At the bottom of this screen under "Manuscript Tasks" will be displayed a "Review Manuscript" link. Clicking on this link will display the "Review Manuscript" Screen. This screen is broken into 4 parts as follows:

• Manuscript background information.
• A review pop-down selection.
• Remarks to the author.
• Remarks to the editor.

If you prefer to work offline, you may find it quickest to download and print the PDF file, draft your review remarks using your favorite word processor and cut/paste it back into the reviewer remarks text area on this screen.

Be careful if you intend to copy and paste your written remarks back into the online system. Please do not assume that all lines of your original text were successfully copied back into the text box on the online page, and ensure you manually check that all of the write-up has been included.

In your evaluation you may want to consider the following points:

• Is the paper original?
• Is it well written?
• Are critical references given?
• Is the length of the paper commensurate with the message?
• Are all tables, figures, graphs and photographs necessary?
• If applicable, is "Material and Methods" section adequately written and referenced?

If you have not done so recently, for our future files please remember to Modify Profile when you are logged in to this site, providing 3-4 keywords to briefly describe your field(s) of expertise.

If you need additional help, you can click on the help signs spread throughout the system. A help dialog will pop up with context sensitive help. For additional help, please contact the journal office: contact@embo.org

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