Publishing Infographic Final

1. Online submission: Authors write a draft through ScienceMatters’ online editor. Once the draft is ready, authors can submit.

2. Formal Check (pre-review): The editorial team examines the manuscript for plagiarism, thematic fit, maintenance of anonymisation and other formatting issues.

If the formal check is not approved, the manuscript is rejected and sent back to authors for revisions and resubmission.

If the formal check is approved, the manuscript is sent to a selected handling editor, primarily from our editorial board.

3. Triple-blind Peer Reviewing:

a. The handling editor will receive a list of 5 reviewers from the editorial team, which she/he will rank and check for suitability. The handling editor approves the reviewers and initiates the review process by sending out the initial invitations to reviewers. The system sends out automatic invites to the reviewers on the list, until two reviewers accept the invitation. The triple blindness is maintained since the handling editor will not know which two reviewers accepted the invitation to review.

b. Reviewers are asked to submit a report within 3-5 days. Reviewers are compensated with $25 per reviewed manuscript.

c. Scoring: Reviewers score the manuscript on technical quality (50%), conceptual advance and impact (50%). The score ranges from 1-10 in each category. Manuscripts with a technical score above 4 are published in Matters, while manuscripts with an overall score above 8 are eligible for publication in Matters Select.

d. The handling editor makes the editorial decision based on the two external reviewers’ reports.

e. If the handling editor deems that minor/major revisions are required, the manuscript goes through a second round of review by the same reviewers.

4. Post-peer-review: The editorial team executes the final stage of proofreading, copy editing and layout.
Authors receive a digital proof via the online platform, to approve the manuscript for publication.

5. Publication: Articles are assigned a DOI and a pdf file is created. The article is archived in Portico and indexed on Google Scholar.