FIG Peer Review Journal
|
Instruction for reviewers
GUIDELINES
1. Introduction
The aim of the Peer Review is to
- proof, assure and improve the quality of the presented papers at
the Congress.
- offer to the authors the possibility of an external check for
their professional work
- offer academic proof for a scientific publication.
2. General Procedure
This review is “double-blind”, which means that at least 2
independent experts are reviewing each paper twice. The paper was made
anonymous beforehand. In other words: the reviewer does not know the
originator of this paper. The reviewer should not indicate to the author
– even after the Congress – that he was reviewing the paper.
The quality of our Peer Review depends directly from your effort and
your expertise. With respect to the fixed date of the Working Week there
is only a limited period of time for the review and for the changes and
improvements done by authors.
If the paper is finally “not accepted” as Peer Reviewed Paper, the
author has still the option to publish and present it as a normal paper.
The fact that a paper failed the review will not be published.
a. Final Recommendation
With the paper to be reviewed you receive an online questionnaire.
The link to the questionnaire is s unique created for each
reviewer/paper. The unique link is tied to the reviewer so you can
submit a review/questionnaire on the paper.
Please write comments exclusively for the editors and comments or
instructions for the authors. It is recommended to write comments to the
author to give the author a more thorough explanation of your rating and
evaluation. Please also notice that your rating will be blinded, so that
the author does not know the identity of the reviewers. Please also
notice that the paper for the first review will not be edited in the FIG
template but is the paper originally submitted by the author. When
improving the paper if needed, the author will also be asked to use the
FIG template if that is not already the case.
For your final recommendation you have four options:
AAA - Accepted without changes
AA - Accepted with minor changes changes
A - Accepted with major changes changes
NA - Not accepted
“Minor changes” are optional for the author; “Major changes” must be
done by the authors otherwise FIG will not publish the paper as
successfully Peer Reviewed. Due to the limitations in time (in
contradiction to a Review for a Journal) it is possible that the general
idea of the paper is excellent, but there is not sufficient time left
for the necessary general revision. Conclusion: The paper must be
rejected! In this case you could recommend to revise the paper and to
present it at the next working week or Congress. Otherwise the paper can
be presented as a normal non-peer-review paper.
Consider also that a paper which is not highly innovative can still be
of excellent quality, due to its originality (Best Practice Report,
Description of the state-of-the art, strategic ideas,…)
b. Follow-Up of major changes
If major changes are required FIG asks the author if they are willing
to do these on time. If he does agree, FIG will check the improvements
of the paper and forward the paper to the reviewer for the second round
of review.
c. Policy
Please consider that authors for an FIG-Working Week are coming from
all over the world. The possibilities of work (access to literature,
databases, software, etc.) are quite different. We also have young
authors who are not as experienced in research & publication as you as
an expert are.
We expect that on one hand you are polite and constructive, but on
the other hand your recommendation must be clear and objective.
d. Language
The big majority of the FIG-community, including the authors and the
reviewers are non-native speakers. Therefore you should check also the
language of the paper (correctness, comprehensibility, …), but you
should not give corrections! Of course, you can give the author an
example of his faults, but please do not correct the document.
e. Originality
Question N0 12 is very important: If the paper was – to your
knowledge - in a large extent already published (especially as a peer
reviewed publication!) then you should consider seriously to reject the
paper! This does not mean that the author cannot rely on his ideas from
previous papers, but at least there are some new aspects,
investigations, methods or policies required.
If you are unable to complete a review
If for any reason the reviewer cannot submit by the required date or
cannot complete the review for any other reason (e.g. they have a
conflict of interest), they must notify the FIG Office at
fig@fig.net
If you have any questions about the online review process please
contact Claudia Stormoen at
csp@fig.net
Thank you very much for your efforts and your time spent on this. It
helps FIG to improve the quality and the attractiveness of our Working
Week.
Volker Schwieger
Chief Editor
