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BEC reviewers

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Bioenergetics Communications        
Gnaiger 2020 BEC MitoPathways
       
Gnaiger Erich et al ― MitoEAGLE Task Group (2020) Mitochondrial physiology. Bioenerg Commun 2020.1.
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Bioenergetics Communications is the Open Science journal on bioenergetics and mitochondrial physiology with Living Communications Open Access logo.png - ISSN 2791-4690

BEC reviewers

Bioenergetics Communications

Open Peer Review

  • Once received for publication, the manuscript will be directed to a section editor or an associate editor. This editor will decide if it will go to review from the following questions:
  1. Is the material of scientific content?
  2. Is the topic suitable for the journal's aims and scope?
  • With affirmative answers to both questions, the Open Peer Review process will follow: An Open Peer Review alert is circulated to subscribers as an invitation to submit external contributions. If at least two answers are received within (set time limit) and match the criteria for reviewers (see questions below), the editor can decide on starting the review process with these reviewers.
  • If necessary, the reviewers suggested by the authors or other reviewers may be contacted specifically by the BEC editors.
  • Before accepting to review a manuscript, the reviewers will be asked the following questions:
  1. Do you declare any conflict of interest?
  2. Does the manuscript match your area of expertise?
  3. Will you be able to provide a review within (set time limit)?
  4. Reviewers will also be asked (1) to accept the Open Peer Review format, and (2) to decide, if they want to be listed on the BEC website under ‘BEC reviewers’. For the listed BEC reviewers, the publications will be listed which have been reviewed by the respective reviewer. Editorial board members may equally act as reviewers.


  • Mediation:
  • External review should lead without 'unreasonable' delay to publication in Bioenergetics Communications. BEC reviewers do not have the option to insist on additional experiments, but strictly focus on the quality of the presently provided information. BEC reviewers may suggest additional experiments for future versions, without delay of publishing the actually available and evaluated information.
  • Reviewer's comments will be sent directly to the authors (corresponding author).
Upon publication, reviewers comments and author responses will be made publicly available on the BEC publication page (open peer-review, signed and published).


  • Criteria for acceptance:
A minimum of 2 reviewers’ acceptance (including with minor or major revisions) will be necessary to publish an article. In the case that the two have very different reviews, the editor can decide on asking for a third reviewer. There is no maximum of reviewers, and new reviews can be published any time, also after acceptance and publication of the manuscript.


Review

The following questions have been adapted from the reviewer forms of the Journal of Applied Physiology and Pflugers Archive European Journal of Physiology.
  • BEC-specific recommendations are highlighted.

Reviewer's assessment

  1. Manuscript #
  2. Submission Date
  3. Current Stage
  4. Title
  5. Category
  6. Contributing Authors
  7. Associate Editor

Recommendation

BEC specific

  • Is the topic suitable for the journal's aims and scope?
  1. Yes
  2. No
  • BEC does not ask for revisions on the basis of additionally suggested experiments. Reviewers are asked to comment exclusively on the content of a manuscript submitted for publication. Cooperative reviewers may offer to contribute their own additional results and join as co-authors.

Scientific content

  1. Original
  2. Confirmatory
  3. Too preliminary
  4. Trivial
  • BEC considers confirmatory results as highly valuable; publication of confirmatory results is the key approach to communicate reproducibility.
  • BEC accepts preliminary results, particularly in conjunction with testing of experimental procedures. 'Too preliminary' should be evaluated, however, with respect to the conclusions (see below).

Experimental approach

  1. Innovative
  2. Advanced
  3. Standard
  4. Inadequate
You might consider the following aspects:
  • How well is the question defined?
  • How well are the methods described (and discussed, especially for methodological papers)?
  • How well are the criteria for assessing the variables defined?
  • Are the control groups adequate (qualitative and quantitative)?
  • What is the quality of the the sample selection (confounding factors)?
  • How well does the sample size correspond to the question (power calculation)? In the case of a preliminary study, is it clearly stated and discussed?
  • Is the method for statistical evaluation appropriate?
  • Are the methods appropriate for answering the questions?

Presentation of the data

  1. Adequate
  2. Not appropriate
You might consider the following aspects:
  • How well are the results described?
  • Are the results comprehensible?

Conclusions

  1. Justified
  2. Too speculative
  3. Unjustified
You might consider the following aspects:
  • How well are the results discussed?
  • How well are the results compared with the literature?
  • How clear are the conclusions drawn?

References

  1. Adequate
  2. Incomplete
  3. Too many
  • BEC may recommend to move excessive numbers of references from the manuscript (pdf) to the publication page under 'Supplementary references'. Each reference may be followed by a short comment.

Figures and tables

  1. Well prepared
  2. Poor
  3. Too many
  • BEC may recommend moving excessive numbers of figures and tables from the manuscript (pdf) to the publication page under 'Supplementary figures and tables'. Each supplementary figure and table has to be explained briefly and is preferentially placed into a Supplement section (see below).

Abstract

  1. Clear and concise
  2. Clumsy
  3. Too long

Language

  1. Acceptable
  2. In need of minor corrections
  3. In need of language editing

Length of the manuscript

  1. Adequate
  2. Too short
  3. Too long
  • BEC may recommend to move excessive text from the manuscript (pdf) to the publication page under 'Supplement A', 'Supplement B', etc. Each supplementary section is referred to in the main text, has a short title, and may have a list of authors that is more specific than the complete list of authors of the main manuscript.

General rating

  1. Accept
  2. Minor revision
  3. Major revision
  4. Reject

Overall evaluation

  1. Excellent
  2. Good
  3. Average
  4. Poor


Ethics questions

  • For animal studies and human studies, has ethical approval been obtained and so stated in the paper? For human studies has the obtaining of written, informed subject consent been noted in the paper?
  1. Yes
  2. No
  3. N/A


Review comments

  • Confidential comments to the editor
  • Please elaborate on your evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript and how the research will contribute to the field.
  1. Strengths:
  2. Weaknesses:
  • Open review
  • Include in your critique your judgment of the significance of the findings, the clarity of the rationale and hypotheses, accuracy of the experimental design, methods and statistical analysis, quality of data presentation, length and quality of Discussion, and inclusion of appropriate references.
  • Please make clear any specific comments for revision.


Bioenergetics Communications

Bioenergetics Communications is part of the H2020 NextGen-O2k project

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MitoPedia topics: BEC