Editorial Process
All the manuscripts (except for non-peer-reviewed types, all published papers that undergo the peer review process will be labelled as "Peer-Reviewed") submitted to Highlights of Science journals will undergo a rigorous single-blind peer-review process by at least two independent reviewers in the relevant field, followed by a final acceptance/rejection decision by an academic editor (the Editor-in-Chief, members of the editorial board or invited guest editors).
The editorial process consists of several stages, as outlined in the following descriptions.
Pre-check
1. Initial Check by the editorial office
Once a new submission is received, the in-house editorial staff (professionally trained managing editors) will conduct an initial check to determine whether the manuscript:
has been properly prepared following the journal Instructions for Authors;
is suitable for the journal (and Special Issue);
meets the standards of the journal.
Obviously poor manuscripts will be rejected before peer review.
2. Academic Editor Assessment
An academic editor (the Editor-in-Chief, members of the editorial board, or invited guest editors) will be invited to assess whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and whether it aligns with the scope of the journal, as well as the Special Issue/Topic Collection (for submissions going to Special Issues/Topic Collections). If the manuscript does not meet these criteria, it will be rejected immediately before peer review.
Peer-Review
A single-blind peer-review process is applied for Highlights of Science journals. This means that reviewers know the identity of authors, but authors are not aware of the identity of reviewers.
Authors and reviewers are given the choice to participate in Open Peer Review. In such cases, authors can choose to publish all review reports and their corresponding responses to the review comments alongside their paper. In any cases, the reviewers' identities remain confidential during the peer review process unless they choose to sign their reviews. If a reviewer signs their report, their identity will be disclosed after the final publication of the paper they reviewed.
Each submitted manuscript will be assessed by at least two qualified reviewers. Reviewers typically have two weeks to submit their report after agreeing to review. The journal's editorial office will follow up with late reviewers and keep authors informed if there are any delays.
Reviewers can be suggested by the academic editors at any stage before a final acceptance/rejection decision, or may be identified through web searches for related articles by the in-house editorial staff. The final selected reviewers are based on their expertise, publication history, and/or past reviews for Highlights of Science journals. All reviewers must fulfil the following criteria:
hold a PhD degree or be a recognised expert in the field;
have no conflicts of interest with the authors and the submitted manuscript;
not have co-authored publications with the authors in the last five years;
have recent publications in the field of the submitted manuscript.
The in-house editorial staff will assist the academic editors in handling all communications with reviewers, authors, and external editors. However, the academic editors can check the status of manuscripts, the identity of reviewers, and reviewer comments at any time.
Editor Decision
After peer-review, the academic editors (the Editor-in-Chief, members of the editorial board or invited guest editors) will make an editorial decision based on reviewers' comments and their own evaluation. The following decision types are available:
Accept
Minor Revision
Major Revision
Reject
When making an editorial decision, the academic editors should consider the suitability of the selected reviewers, the appropriateness of the reviewers' comments, the authors' responses, as well as the overall scientific quality of the paper.
The academic editors are free to disagree with the reviewers' recommendations. If they do so, they should include an explanation of why for the benefit of the authors and reviewers.
Sometimes an editorial decision to accept a manuscript is supported by an academic editor despite a reviewer's reject recommendation. Before communicating a final decision to the authors, the in-house editorial staff will request a second, independent opinion from an editorial board member or the Editor-in-Chief.
Manuscripts submitted by academic editors (the Editor-in-Chief, members of the editorial board or invited guest editors) are processed following exactly the same editorial procedure as other submissions. The academic editors will not be involved in the processing of their own manuscripts. The academic editors are not permitted to make decisions on their own manuscripts. Other editors from the editorial board who do not have a conflict of interest with the authors will make the decisions instead.
In all circumstances (except for non-peer-reviewed articles), an academic editor is the only person who can approve an article for publication. The in-house editorial staff never decide whether to accept manuscripts. After that, the journal's editorial office will communicate the decisions to authors in a formal letter.
Revision
Once all review reports are received, the in-house editorial staff will contact the academic editor to make an editorial decision (Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, Reject and Encourage Resubmission, Ask for an Additional Reviewer, or Reject).
When the decision is major/minor revision, authors are usually requested to revise their manuscript based on reviewers' comments and/or the academic editor's recommendations within a given deadline. When resubmitting the revised manuscript, authors need to provide point-by-point responses to reviewers' and/or academic editor's comments with a detailed explanation of how the manuscript has been revised. The revised version will be returned to the reviewers and the academic editor for further comments, unless the reviewers have chosen not to see the revised version.
Apart from exceptional circumstances, a maximum of one round of major revision is
allowed per manuscript. Authors are recommended to address all the issues raised by the reviewers right after the first round of review.
Author Appeals
Authors may submit a formal appeal for rejections by sending an email to the journal's editorial office. The appeal must provide a detailed justification and point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or academic editor's comments. The journal's editorial office will forward the appeal together with the manuscript and previous reviews to a designated academic editor (members of the editorial board) for consideration. Any recommendation/decision by the academic editor on the manuscript will be finally validated and approved by the Editor-in-Chief. An approved rejection decision on the appeal will be final and cannot be reversed.
Production and Publication
The accepted manuscripts without language issues will undergo professional copy-editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and publication on the website. All the published papers will have an assigned DOI number.
In case extensive English editing is required by reviewers/editors, authors must have their manuscripts edited by a professional editing service or a proficient/native English speaker, and a certificate/statement must be provided to the editorial office. The journal's editorial office will proceed to the copy-editing stage only after receiving the language-edited version and the certificate/statement.
The following flowchart shows the summary of the editorial process at Highlights of Science.
