Guidelines for editors

As an Editor (or Guest Editor), you will be invited to perform different tasks, starting with assessing the suitability of the submission for peer review in J-ISPIN, then assigning reviewers, monitoring the review process and formulating a decision on the submission.

• When you get a paper assignment notification, please first check whether you have any conflict of interest. If yes, please let the Editor In Chief know immediately so that s/he can reassign it to another Editor.
• Before you assign the paper to reviewers, you should judge whether the paper is suitable for the scope of J-ISPIN. If it is out of scope or has very poor quality, you can recommend immediate rejection with detailed comments.

• You should ask independent reviewers and make sure that at least 2 (preferably 3) agree to review the paper
• The Editor should not change the number of reviewers required by the system to allow for issuing a recommendation. It is very important to find qualified reviewers.
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• As far as possible, you should avoid inviting new reviewers in subsequent review rounds. However, if a reviewer does not accept to perform the follow-up review, you should invite a new reviewer. When minor reviews are involved, you should check the paper and see if the reviewers’ comments have been satisfactorily addressed by authors in the revised manuscript.

• Once you receive enough reviews for a paper, you will be asked to make an editorial recommendation to the authors.
• Please check all the reviewers’ comments carefully and ask the reviewers to revise the comments, if needed (it needs to rescind the review for review resubmission).
• We aim to give constructive comments to the authors and avoid possible unpleasant rebuttals. The reviewers may have a different perception of the meaning of their recommendations.
• Your decision should be based on the contents of the reviews and your own judgement of the paper.
• You can recommend a rejection based on two reviewers' reject recommendations.
• If the authors submit a rebuttal, you should provide them with constructive explanations.