Currently for JMR submissions that enter into the peer review process, the average time to complete the peer review is approximately 5-6 month.
All submitted manuscripts are subjected to format, language, and quality checks carried out by the Editorial Office. The check also includes plagiarism detection through iThenticate™. Manuscripts with severe problems in scope, novelty, format, language, data presentation or image quality will be rejected immediately without entering the manuscript processing chain.
Acceptable manuscripts are passed on to appropriate Editors-in-Chief (EIC). The EIC will make an initial evaluation on the content and the language. Based on that, the EIC will decide if the manuscript should enter the peer-review process. If yes, the EIC will designate an appropriate Editor/Associate Editor to handle the manuscript for peer-review.
The Editor/Associate Editor will decide if the assigned manuscript is worthy for peer-review. If yes, he/she will assign reviewers and evaluate their comments, and make the decision accordingly. The Editor’s decision will be passed to the EIC who will make a final decision. Please note: All decisions made by Editors/Associate Editors will be monitored by the responsible EIC.
Conflict of interests
To promote ethical behavior, JMR has formed a "conflict of interest" policy for editors and reviewers. In order to ensure that fair editorial decisions are made, any person who has a conflict of interest should not be in a position to review manuscripts (it is usually obvious when the title and authors of the manuscript are known). There is a conflict of interest if:
You and any of the authors involved in the manuscript are close family friends or direct relatives;
You and any of the authors involved in the manuscript are the colleagues of the same organization;
You are working on a highly related research topic as the content of the manuscript, or you and the authors are competing to answer a similar research question, which may allow you to learn ideas and methods, previously unpublished, from the manuscript;
You and any of the authors have a student-supervisor relationship within the past five years (including post-doc).
Obligations of Editors
(Quoted from American Meteorological Society documents)
1. An editor should give unbiased consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, judging each on its own merits without regard to the author’s race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. All authors should be treated with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, and honesty.
2. An editor must protect the confidentiality of all reviewers unless the reviewer reveals their identity to the author.
3. An editor should process manuscripts promptly.
4. The editor has complete responsibility and authority to accept a submitted paper for publication or to reject it. The editor may confer informally with associate editors or reviewers for an evaluation of the work to use in making this decision.
5. Editors must provide reviewers with written, explicit instructions on the journal's expectations for the scope, content, quality, and timeliness of their reviews to promote thoughtful, fair, constructive, and informative critique of submitted work.
6. The editor and the editorial staff should not disclose any information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than reviewers and potential reviewers. Reviews and reviewer identity can be shared with other Editors of AMS journals if the author consents to having the paper transferred. It is contrary to AMS publications policy for editors to release reviews or reviewers' identity to editors of non-AMS journals.
7. A reviewer should not evaluate a manuscript authored or co-authored by a person with whom the reviewer has a close personal or professional connection if the relationship would bias judgment of the manuscript.
8. A reviewer should treat a manuscript sent for review as a confidential document. It should neither be shown to nor discussed with others except, in special cases, to persons from whom specific advice may be sought; in that event, the identities of those consulted should be disclosed to the editor.
9. Reviewers should explain and support their judgments adequately so that editors and authors may understand the basis of their comments. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
10. A reviewer should be alert to failure of authors to cite relevant work by other scientists. A reviewer should call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published paper, or to any manuscript submitted concurrently to another journal.
11. Reviewers should not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of
