For Referees

About the journal

Mucosal Immunology is the official publication of the Society of Mucosal Immunology (SMI). It aims to provide a forum for both basic and clinical scientists to discuss all aspects of immunity and inflammation involving mucosal tissues. The journal reflects the interests of scientists studying gastrointestinal, pulmonary, nasopharyngeal, oral, ocular, and genitourinary immunology through the publication of original research articles, scholarly reviews, and timely commentaries, editorials and letters. Publication of basic, translational, and clinical studies will all be given equal consideration. In addition, Mucosal Immunology aims to provide a primary method of communication for the SMI governing board and its members through the publication of society news, announcements of planned meetings and conferences, discussions of policy concerns, and advertisements for job and training opportunities.

Criteria for publication

Mucosal Immunology receives many more submissions than it can publish each month. It is therefore important that manuscripts are critically evaluated for compliance with the following criteria:

Data reproducibility. Original data must include adequate evidence of reproducibility. An accurate description of each set of data that is shown must be provided and must include the number of biological replicates, the number of experiments performed, and the description and use of appropriate statistical methods. The editors will not accept representative single experiments without the author’s written agreement to make available all of the replicate data upon request. Manuscripts submitted without evidence of reproducibility will be rejected without formal review.

Novelty. Original findings must represent a major advance in the respective field. Data providing only an incremental advance or extension of prior work will be given low priority.

Scope. Only manuscripts that include a substantive body of work will be considered. In most cases this will include a primary observation together with data providing mechanistic insight. Purely descriptive studies will be given low priority.

In vivo validation. Higher priority for publication will be given to findings that are validated in vivo in animal models and/or by studies of relevant immune processes in humans or patient cohorts. Purely in vitro experiments will be given low priority and may be immediately returned without full review.

Human studies. Manuscripts providing novel insights into human disease processes including studies of basic immunological and/or disease mechanisms, as well as functional studies of gene mutations and polymorphisms, are welcome. Manuscripts providing primary results of clinical trials are currently not within the scope of the journal.

Vaccine studies. Manuscripts evaluating novel vaccine candidates without documentation of in vivo protection in humans or a relevant animal model of infection, without comparison with existing vaccines, or without insight into basic immunological mechanisms will be given low priority.

Invertebrate immunology. Studies that provide novel insight into human immunology and disease will be welcomed, but findings of unclear relevance to human or vertebrate immunology should be submitted elsewhere.

Genetic studies. Studies of gene expression patterns or identification of disease-associated mutations or polymorphisms without experiments exploring the biological relevance of the findings will be given low priority.

The review process

Manuscripts are assessed by an editor upon submission. To save authors and reviewers time, only manuscripts that meet our editorial criteria are sent out for formal review.

Manuscripts that are sent for formal review are assessed by at least two reviewers. Based on their advice, the editor will:

accept the manuscript, with or without minor revision
request that the authors revise the manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached
reject the manuscript, typically due to lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems

Reviewers 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 reviewer and by the authors. The most useful reviewer 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.

Reviewers may, on occasion, be asked for further advice, particularly when they disagree with one another, or where the authors believe that they have been misunderstood on points of fact. This kind of discussion is sometimes necessary to provide an effective and fair review process. We do understand, however, that reviewers are reluctant to be drawn into prolonged disputes, so we try to keep consultation to the minimum we judge necessary to come to a fair conclusion. In certain cases, additional reviewers or members of our editorial board may be consulted to resolve disputes.

Reviewers may access and comment on articles via the online reviewing site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mi.

Selecting referees

Reviewers 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 are based on an evaluation of the arguments raised by each reviewer and by the authors. The most useful reviewer reports, therefore, are those that state clear, substantiated arguments and refrain from recommending a course of action in the comments directed to the authors.

Upon receiving a manuscript to referee

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

check the deadline to prevent misunderstandings regarding timing, and contact the editorial office immediately if you anticipate any difficulties in submitting the review on time
carefully read the editor's letter, noting any points specific to the manuscript that the editor may have requested your opinion about
skim the manuscript and determine any conflict of interest for you to serve as reviewer (consider the authors, their institution, their funding sources) and decide whether or not you can judge the article impartially
contemplate the topic: does it fit the scope of the journal and is it likely to be of sufficient general interest for publication?

Confidentiality

The review process is strictly confidential. Reviewers should keep the following guidelines in mind:

manuscripts reviewed for Mucosal Immunology should not be discussed with anyone who is not directly involved in the review process
if colleagues are consulted, they should be identified to the editors
if experts from outside the reviewer's own laboratory are consulted, reviewers should check with the editors beforehand to avoid involving anyone who may have been excluded by the editor
reviewers should not disclose their identities to the authors or to other colleagues. We strongly disapprove of any attempt by authors to determine the identities of or confront reviewers, and encourage reviewers to neither confirm nor deny any speculation in this regard

Writing the report

The primary purpose of reviewer 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. Reviewers are asked to submit both confidential comments to the editor and those that can be directly transmitted to the authors. We recommend the following division of the report:

Confidential comments to editors

Reviewers are asked to provide a recommendation for publication and their primary reasons for this decision.

Comments to the authors

Reviewers are asked to maintain a positive and impartial, but critical, attitude in evaluating manuscripts. Criticisms should remain dispassionate; offensive language is not acceptable. As thoroughly as possible, a negative report should explain to the authors the weaknesses of their manuscript.

The ideal report should include:

an initial paragraph that summarizes the major findings and the reviewer's overall impressions and highlights the major shortcomings of the manuscript
specifically numbered comments that may be broken down into major and minor criticisms if necessary (numbering facilitates the editor's evaluation of the manuscript and the author's 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?
who will be interested and why?
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 reviewers can provide advice on the following points where appropriate:

how the clarity of the writing might be improved (without necessarily going into specific details of spelling and grammar)
how the manuscript might be condensed
how to do the study justice without overselling the claims
how to represent earlier literature more completely
how to improve the presentation of methodological detail so that the experiments can be reproduced
the submission of supplementary data on www.nature.com/mi to enhance the presentation (depositing, for example, crystallographic information, source code for modelling studies, microarray data, detailed methods, mathematical derivations, long tables and movies)

Editing referee reports

As a matter of policy, we do not suppress reviewer reports. In almost all cases, any comments intended for the authors are transmitted. On rare occasions, we may edit a report where the reviewer has made an obvious factual mistake, or to remove offensive language or comments that reveal confidential information. We ask reviewers to avoid including comments that may cause needless offense, but also expect authors to recognize that criticisms are not necessarily unfair.

Timing

Mucosal Immunology is committed to rapid editorial decisions and publication. Efficiency in this process is a valuable service to our authors and to the scientific community as a whole. We therefore ask that reviewers respond promptly or inform us if they anticipate a significant delay in the completion of their review, which allows us to keep the authors informed, and, when necessary, find alternative reviewers.

Disclosure/Conflicts of interest

In order to ensure fairness in the reviewer process, we avoid selecting reviewers 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
have a financial interest in the outcome.

Because it is not possible for the editors to be aware of all possible biases, we ask reviewers to draw our attention to anything that might affect their report, including commercial interests, and to decline review invitations when they cannot be objective. We do not find it necessary to exclude reviewers who have reviewed a paper for another journal; the fact that two journals have independently identified a particular person as well qualified to review a paper does not decrease the validity of her/his opinion in our view.

In terms of application to editorial board members or editors: Editors and editorial board members and external editors are welcome to submit papers to the journal. However, per ICMJE, editorial board members and external editors must declare any competing interests, including their editorship, in the manuscript.

If they are not an author but acting in their handling capacity, editors should still recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in cases where there is a competing interest. This may include – but is not limited to – having previously published with one or more of the authors, and sharing the same institution as one or more of the authors (see above for other examples).

In either of these cases - if editors are an author, or have any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript - another member of the editorial board will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review. These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and editorial board member or external editor status has no bearing on editorial consideration.

Publication policy

Despite our best efforts to identify breaches of publication policy or ethical conduct such as plagiarism or conflict of interest, the reviewers who are familiar with the field are more likely to recognize such problems and should alert the editors to any potential problems in this regard.