Reviewer guidelines

Scandinavian Journal of Materials Science (ScandJMS) uses a single-anonymous review (also called single-blind peer review). This means that the reviewers’ names are not disclosed to the author, but the reviewer can see who the author is.

Competing interests

As a reviewer of ScandJMS you are expected to uphold the integrity of the peer review process, and hence a careful consideration of competing interests is important. As competing interests may introduce a perceived or actual bias in the peer review process they can compromise a study at a later stage, even if the study is perfectly valid. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial and they can be of a professional or personal character. They arise in relationship to an organization or another person.

If you believe that you have competing interests, please contact the editors. The editors may ask you to review anyway, or decide to find a different reviewer. In either case it is important that the editor understands the nature of the competing interests, and can account for them when evaluating reviewer feedback.

Reviewer assessment

There are two main aims of the peer review: to assist in selecting papers suitable for publication in ScandJMS and to support the improvement of the manuscripts. We ask the reviewers to assess the quality, validity, and relevance of the manuscript at hand, and to motivate any major criticism conveyed to the authors. Your focus should thus be on the originality, presentation, and relevance to the readership of the journal and also on the accuracy of the methodology. Please provide as detailed comments as possible, which are suitable for sending to the author. These can be used to make constructive suggestions, seek clarifications, or ask for further elaboration.

Please note that ScandJMS appreciates if you pay attention to the title of the manuscript, which is very important; it should be informative without being too long. The same goes for the abstract, as many readers will only read the title and abstract.

We do not expect or request detailed language checking, but appreciate information on the quality of the English language, especially where the technical meaning is unclear. If revisions are needed, we may return the paper for correction. The quality and necessity of figures/photos should preferably be commented on as well as the need for Tables.

Please note that JRM is working hard trying to minimize the publication time, in which the review process is a crucial factor. We will therefore urge you as reviewer to let us know immediately if you are unable to review a manuscript or try to keep the deadline given in the reviewer request to you. If you struggle to meet the deadline given, please let the editorial office know, so they can inform the author and update the system.