BEC reviewers

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Bioenergetics Communications is the Open Science journal on bioenergetics and mitochondrial physiology with Living Communications - ISSN 2791-4690

BEC reviewers

Open Peer Review

• Once received for publication, the manuscript will be directed to a section editor or an associate editor. This editor will decide if it will go to review from the following questions:

1. Is the material of scientific content?
2. Is the topic suitable for the journal's aims and scope?

• With affirmative answers to both questions, the Open Peer Review process will follow: An Open Peer Review alert is circulated to subscribers as an invitation to submit external contributions. If at least two answers are received within (set time limit) and match the criteria for reviewers (see questions below), the editor can decide on starting the review process with these reviewers.
• If necessary, the reviewers suggested by the authors or other reviewers may be contacted specifically by the BEC editors.

• Before accepting to review a manuscript, the reviewers will be asked the following questions:

1. Do you declare any conflict of interest?
2. Does the manuscript match your area of expertise?
3. Will you be able to provide a review within (set time limit)?
4. Reviewers will also be asked (1) to accept the Open Peer Review format, and (2) to decide, if they want to be listed on the BEC website under ‘BEC reviewers’. For the listed BEC reviewers, the publications will be listed which have been reviewed by the respective reviewer. Editorial board members may equally act as reviewers.

• Mediation:

• Reviewer's comments to a discussion of a BEC publication will be sent directly to the authors (corresponding author) with the intention to prepare a jointly signed discussion which will be submitted to Bioenergetics Communications.

At the end of the review process, it will be published: (1) reviewed publication, (2) discussion on the publication jointly signed by authors and reviewers

• If the authors do not respond appropriately to the reviewer's comments, or do not agree on preparing a jointly signed discussion, the reviewer can contact the editorial board directly, with the possibility of publishing a comment on the publication without the consent of the authors, for consideration in the final Open Peer Review process for the BEC publication.

At the end of the review process, it will be published: (1) reviewed publication, (2) comments by the reviewers

• Criteria for acceptance:

A minimum of 2 reviewers’ acceptance (including with minor or major revisions) will be necessary to publish an article. In the case that the two have very different reviews, the editor can decide on asking for a third reviewer. There is no maximum of reviewers, and new reviews can be published any time, also after acceptance and publication of the manuscript.

Review

The following questions have been adapted from the reviewer forms of the Journal of Applied Physiology and Pflugers Archive European Journal of Physiology.

• BEC-specific recommendations are highlighted.

Reviewer's assessment

1. Manuscript #
2. Submission Date
3. Current Stage
4. Title
5. Category
6. Contributing Authors
7. Associate Editor

Recommendation

BEC specific

• Is the topic suitable for the journal's aims and scope?

1. Yes
2. No

• BEC does not ask for revisions on the basis of additionally suggested experiments. Reviewers are asked to comment exclusively on the content of a manuscript submitted for publication. Cooperative reviewers may offer to contribute their own additional results and join as co-authors.

Scientific content

1. Original
2. Confirmatory
3. Too preliminary
4. Trivial

• BEC considers confirmatory results as highly valuable; publication of confirmatory results is the key approach to communicate reproducibility.
• BEC accepts preliminary results, particularly in conjunction with testing of experimental procedures. 'Too preliminary' should be evaluated, however, with respect to the conclusions (see below).

Experimental approach

1. Innovative
2. Advanced
3. Standard
4. Inadequate

Presentation of the data

1. Adequate
2. Not appropriate

Conclusions

1. Justified
2. Too speculative
3. Unjustified

References

1. Adequate
2. Incomplete
3. Too many

• BEC may recommend to move excessive numbers of references from the manuscript (pdf) to the publication page under 'Supplementary references'. Each reference may be followed by a short comment.

Figures and tables

1. Well prepared
2. Poor
3. Too many

• BEC may recommend moving excessive numbers of figures and tables from the manuscript (pdf) to the publication page under 'Supplementary figures and tables'. Each supplementary figure and table has to be explained briefly and is preferentially placed into a Supplement section (see below).

Abstract

1. Clear and concise
2. Clumsy
3. Too long

Language

1. Acceptable
2. In need of minor corrections
3. In need of language editing

Length of the manuscript

1. Adequate
2. Too short
3. Too long

• BEC may recommend to move excessive text from the manuscript (pdf) to the publication page under 'Supplement A', 'Supplement B', etc. Each supplementary section is referred to in the main text, has a short title, and may have a list of authors that is more specific than the complete list of authors of the main manuscript.

General rating

1. Accept
2. Minor revision
3. Major revision
4. Reject

Overall evaluation

1. Excellent
2. Good
3. Average
4. Poor

Ethics questions

• For animal studies and human studies, has ethical approval been obtained and so stated in the paper? For human studies has the obtaining of written, informed subject consent been noted in the paper?

1. Yes
2. No
3. N/A

Review comments

• Confidential comments to the editor

• Please elaborate on your evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript and how the research will contribute to the field.

1. Strengths:
2. Weaknesses:

• Open review

• Include in your critique your judgment of the significance of the findings, the clarity of the rationale and hypotheses, accuracy of the experimental design, methods and statistical analysis, quality of data presentation, length and quality of Discussion, and inclusion of appropriate references.

• Please make clear any specific comments for revision.

Bioenergetics Communications is part of the H2020 NextGen-O2k project

MitoPedia topics: BEC