All manuscripts submitted to be considered for publication in the Journal of Settlements and Spatial Planning will go through a double blind peer-review process. All reviewers will write a thorough review report in which they follow the guidelines of the editorial board on relevant and exigent content-related and formatting aspects established in accordance with the internationally acknowledged editorial policies.
Reviewer guidelines revolve around the ethics of publication, scientific exigency and precise specialization in the corresponding scientific field of the journal.
Guidelines and obligations of the Reviewers
Reviewers are periodically assigned to review manuscripts and they have to fill out a standard peer-review report and complete their evaluation by a certain deadline set together with the editorial team. They need to focus on several essential aspects related to scientific relevance of the subject, content and formatting and give their recommendations to the authors in order to improve quality of the manuscript. Reviewers contribute significantly to the final decision for the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript for publication in JSSP.
Therefore, they must assure of the following:
- critical and confidential review;
- declare any situation of conflict of interest (please contact the editorial board as soon as possible);
- originality of research (new ideas and concepts, clearly and logically approached and debated, connections to other scientific fields);
- logical structure of the paper (title, abstract, methodology, results, conclusions);
- use of specific language, without errors or subject to wrong interpretation;
- check the accuracy of citing and adequacy of references;
- objectivity by offering supportive reasons for the eventual adjustments to be made by the authors;
- constructive remarks;
- promptness of returning back the manuscript and the full reviewer report to the editorial board by the commonly agreed deadline;
Reviewers can also reject a manuscript if:
- they consider the subject of the paper irrelevant for the journal;
- the paper has significant deficiencies in terms of content or language.
Reviewers may decline reviewing a manuscript if:
- the reviewer does not have the full competence in the subject area of the paper, in which case the article will be allotted to another reviewer (specialized in the specific subject);
- reviewers are in conflict of interest with the authors or the institution they are affiliated to, fact that could bias the review process or could put anyone at a disadvantage, in which case the article will be allotted to another reviewer (specialized in the specific subject).