- The Editor-in-Chief
collect submissions, and delegates each submission to an Editorial Board member (referred to as the
handling editor hereafter).
- The handling editor assigns and sends a paper to three reviewers,
makes a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief based on
the review reports. An early recommendation is encouraged if only two
consistent reviews are received timely.
A reviewer can be either an EB member or another person appointed
by the handling editor.
The handling editor should avoid
two reviewers from the same research group when handling a paper
submission.
- Although the final editorial decision will lie with the
Editor-in-Chief, the technical recommendation as to whether the paper is
publishable lies with the handling editor. It is the
responsibility of the handling editor to work on papers that need
to be resubmitted or accepted based on modifications suggested by
the reviewers.
A minimum of two review reports are required to make a
recommendation. A possible recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief
may be acceptance or rejection.
- If the paper requires revisions, the handling editor interacts
with the authors directly. If a reviewer has suggested a major
revision, the revised paper should be sent back to the original
reviewer whenever possible.
- The Editor-in-Chief will inform the authors about their paper
decision and copy to the handling editor.
- It is the handling editor's responsibility to make sure that there
is no conflict of interest for those people involved in reviewing
any given paper.
If a reviewer feels that his/her decision will be affected, he/she
should return the paper to the handling editor, stating the
conflict of interest. Similarly, the handling editor should not
send the paper to be reviewed by a reviewer who may have a conflict
of interest. Examples of cases which could cause conflict of
interest include:
- papers by an author with which the handling editor or reviewer
has co-authored a paper recently.
- papers by an author in the same department or in a closely
related discipline of the same university as the handling
editor or reviewer.
- papers by an author who was a recent student or thesis advisor
of the handling editor or reviewer.
- A handling editor should make a recommendation within three months
(six weeks for short papers) from the date that the paper is
received from the authors. The handling editor should normally
allow six weeks (three weeks for short papers) for each reviewer to
respond.
- The handling editor should keep records on reviewer performance
and timeliness.
