A letter to an editor--on reviewer invitation and editor's recommendation

Journal of Mountain Science has recruited a group of active international editors (usually young scientists) to manage manuscripts. Their responsibility is to select and invite reviewers, communicate with reviewers, authors, and the executive editor-in-chief, and make recommendation based on the peer-reviewers' comments and his own judgement.

We have prepared PPT to guide them how to handle the manuscripts in the ScholarOne Manuscript system and tell them the reviewer selection and invitation rules. Generally I check the manuscript processing status every day and write emails or leave messages in QQ to the editors to remind them (or to urge them to speed up the procedure) or to give suggesions to them on the reviewer selection, sometimes have a discussion with them about their recommendation.  

The following is the letter that I wrote to one editor when I found he invited a reviewer who is in the same institute as that of the authors, and two of the reviewers are from the same country as that of the authors. Our rule is that the reviewer should be from different organizations from that of the authors and at least one of the reviewers should be outside the authors' own countries.

-------------------------------------

Dear Dr. XXX,

I have read your recommendation but I returned the manuscript status to reviewer selection and extended the deadline for one previously invited reviewer to submit his comments because I found both of the present reviewers are from China, and one of them is from the same institute as that of the authors.

To avoid interest conflict and fair judgement,I think a third reviewer is necessary.

Sincerely

X X X

Executive Editor in Chief,

Journal of Mountain Science  

Institute of Mountain Hazards andEnvironment, CAS

P.O.Box 417

No.16,South Sect.2, the 1st Ring Road(Yihuanlu)

Chengdu 610041, China

Tel:028-85252044

http://jms.imde.ac.cn

---------

I pasted my recently written more detailed suggestions to editors here (July 8, 2015)

About Selecting and Inviting Reviewers:

The online manuscrpt system will list some potential reviewers by matching the title and keywords of the manuscript (MS) with published papers. The editors need to check the recommended reviewers and decide whether to invite them. Before selecting the recommended reviewers, we need to check the reviewers' affiliations (to avoid selecting reviewers who are in the same institutions) and the email address (to ensure it's effective and the most updated), and check the reviewers' past research experience and publication records ( to avoid selecting reviewers who have once been in the same project groups with the authors or who are co-authored, and to see whether the reviewer is qualified  to do peer-review).

The editors can invite reviewers not in the recommended list. We need to create account for these reviewers (on the right of the manuscript panel) .

Generally we should invite reviewers outside the authors' countries or regions and at least one of them should be from English speaking countries.

Editors should check the manuscript status frequently to ensure each MS has at least two reviewers to accept the invitation, remove those who write to say they are unavailable or decline to review from the invited reviewer list in time so as to avoid that the system send repeated notification letter to the invited reviewers.