Referee guide - The Journal of Engineering
Following our recent announcement about the IET’s partnership with Wiley, all of the IET’s journals have migrated to a new online peer-review management system using ScholarOne which is now open for submissions.
If you have been invited to review a paper submitted to ScholarOne, please use the ScholarOne Referee Guide.
Any papers that have been submitted to the journal prior to the system migration will continue to run in ReView and reviewers of these submissions should continue to use the Referee Guide on this page.
If you are uncertain of which Referee Guide to use, please contact [email protected].
Introduction
As with all IET journals, The Journal of Engineering requires that papers be subject to rigorous peer-review prior to acceptance for publication. This ensures that a high standard of publication is maintained by identifying material that is original, scientifically sound and well presented.
Our journals are international in authorship and readership and our reviewers are selected carefully to reflect this.
We value the work of our reviewers and recognise that you are very busy and dedicated people. We are always interested to hear from you, especially regarding your views on how we can provide the best possible service for you. To help us to do this we encourage you to alert us to the following:
- changes in your contact details;
- periods of unavailability (e.g. holidays, sabbaticals);
- changes in your research interests
Aims and indicative scope
The Journal of Engineering is an open access, peer reviewed journal providing a forum for the publication of original primary research findings across a broad spectrum of engineering.
Broad subject areas are provided below, however the journal welcomes submissions in interdisciplinary areas and related emerging fields.
- Biomedical engineering
- Civil engineering
- Computing and software
- Electrical and electronic engineering
- Energy engineering
- Materials engineering
- Mechanical Engineering
- Micro and nanotechnology
Electronic reviewing
The IET uses River Valley Technologies for submissions to The Journal of Engineering and all other IET journals. This web-based system accepts submissions and reviews in electronic format only.
Recognition for your peer review contributions
The IET has now partnered with Publons to give you official recognition for your contribution to peer review. Publons helps you to record, verify, and showcase your peer review contributions for use in your CV, biography, and funding and promotion applications. Publons gives recognition for peer review without compromising reviewer anonymity or infringing upon our journal polices. Read more...
Policy
All submissions are given unbiased consideration regardless of race, gender, ethnic origin, or religion of the authors.
All reviews are single-blind i.e. although you as a reviewer know who the authors are, your anonymity is strictly preserved. Please do not correspond with or transmit your review directly to the authors. Please be aware that reviewer comments are usually sent to the authors. Your review should be objective so please do not make comments about the paper or authors that could cause offence. It is at the Editor’s discretion whether to forward the reviewer comments on to the author.
Confidentiality
Please treat the paper as confidential. If you are unable to review but wish to recommend a colleague, please do not pass the paper to them yourself. Instead, please let us know and we will invite your colleague directly. Upon completion of your review, the paper may not be retained, used or cited prior to publication.
Conflict of interest
Please contact us immediately if:
- you are in direct competition with the authors;
- you are a co-worker or collaborator with any of the authors
- you feel that you have a conflict of interest for any other reason
Criteria for The Journal of Engineering - scientific soundness
When reviewing for The Journal of Engineering, reviewers should ask themselves whether the research is valid, with sound methods and analysis which support the presented conclusions.
The criteria for acceptance in The Journal of Engineering does not include an assessment on the importance of the work submitted, however the work must be scientifically and technically sound. Authors are given a length guidance of 6000 words; however, there is no strict length limit for the journal.
Originality
Papers submitted to The Journal of Engineering must record original work not previously published by the authors in the open literature or under consideration by another publisher or conference whose proceedings are made widely available. Studies that validate results that are already in the literature may be considered for publication, but reference should be made to the earlier published results. It will be at the discretion of the section editor whether to accept these validation studies.
Conference material policy
The Journal of Engineering does not accept material that has previously been presented at a conference for which the conference proceedings are widely available. Any manuscripts that are submitted to The Journal of Engineering that are based on a conference paper must reference the conference and demonstrate an advance in the work over that reported in the conference paper.
Presentation
Reviewers are asked to consider whether the author presents the material logically and in clear English. Accepted papers will be copyedited to ensure clarity and consistency, to correct minor errors (e.g. typographical or language), to standardise various formatting details and to conform to The Journal of Engineering house style.
Therefore as a reviewer you need not worry about the standard of English unless it obscures the meaning of the paper and could not be easily corrected by a copyeditor, in which case the paper is not suitable for The Journal of Engineering.
SI units, and ISO and IEC recommended unit symbols, letter symbols and nomenclature should be used throughout. Reviewers should indicate where other units have been used.
Graphs and other illustrations should be clearly drawn and labelled. Graphs are an effective method of displaying results although too much information in one graph can cause confusion, and may not be easily reproducible in production. Tabular information should not duplicate graphical information.
Rapid online publication
The Journal of Engineering is a rapid publication journal, publishing online on an article by article basis. Consequently, our procedures and systems are designed to streamline the process of reviewing and preparing a manuscript for publication. The limiting factor in the speed of publication is the review process, and peer-review cannot be rushed if it is to be rigorous. However, given the rapid publication nature of The Journal of Engineering we do expect our reviewers to make all reasonable effort to aid us in completing the review process as quickly as possible.
We have designed our report form to allow reviewers to convey their judgement of a manuscript with minimum time and effort and we ask reviewers to complete and return their reviews within 14 days. We understand that this is not always possible if a specific issue arises with a manuscript requiring more effort, but this period is a good general rule for the vast majority of manuscripts. It is worth bearing in mind that if a paper is so unclear that it cannot be understood without great effort then the clarifications that would be required to make it suitable for publication are likely to lead to its rejection.
We also appreciate that your busy schedules can often create unforeseen delays after you have agreed to perform a review and that this cannot be helped. When this happens it is very helpful to us if you can inform us if the review is likely to take significantly longer than the 14 day period. If we know that there is going to be a delay, and are given an estimate of how long it is likely to be, we can make informed choices to maintain the speed of review and may even choose to re-assign the manuscript relieving the pressure on you.
The report form
As discussed above our reviewer report form has been designed to allow you to convey efficiently your judgement of a manuscript.
At the start of the form we ask you to indicate how close the paper is to your particular fields of expertise. There follows a short list of yes/no questions asking you to state whether you consider the work to be technically sound, novel, well-written and well-organised and to have sufficient references. You will also be asked if the paper has been published elsewhere (to the best of your knowledge).
The next item on the form is a grading of the paper from a range of choices (described below) and there is space for appropriate supporting comments for the editor at the end of the form. The last item on the form asks for a binary recommendation to accept or reject the paper. Again, please use the comments box at the end of the form to support your decision.
Grading the paper
The selection of gradings offered on the report form is listed below:
- Significant advance in the field
- Scientifically sound work with clear results and conclusions
This grade should be chosen if the work presented shows that sound research methods and analysis support the conclusions presented. The work may present new information of interest to the community, or may also validate results that are already in the literature as long as clear reference is made to the previously reported results.
- Scientifically sound but without novelty
- Scientifically (or technically) unsound
This grade should be chosen if the paper contains such irreparable technical errors, or if the premise of the work is so flawed, that the results or conclusions become dubious.
- Otherwise unsuitable
This grade is intended for papers that do not quite fit into any of the above gradings but are nonetheless unsuitable for publication. Reasons should be given in the comments section of the form.
Editage - providing high quality editorial services to IET authors
IET has partnered with Editage to provide editorial services to authors submitting to IET Journals. The services will help authors craft well-written manuscripts for submission to the journal of their choice. A panel of highly qualified and experienced experts provide subject-relevant editing and review support. Editage also provide free post-review support to help the author check manuscript revisions. Find out more here.
