How to become a peer reviewer

Potential peer referees are added to the Journal database in a number of ways by a variety of actors in the process. Authors who formally submit potential contributions by default become members of the community of scientists and scholars who may be called upon by the editors to serve as peer referees for the Journal. Editors make use of search engines to identify experts for particular papers assigned to their care and add these experts to the system records. Peer referees—in the process of declining review invitations—often nominate colleagues and students who may render sound critiques on given topics; editors then weigh these suggestions and often add the nominated individuals to the Journal database. Finally, scientists and scholars who seek to serve as potential peer reviewers may volunteer by logging into the Journal site and registering in our submission system. Refinements are available that allow editors to readily assess the quality, timeliness, and accumulated records of included database members as both authors and reviewers.

The peer review process at JCivil Avia is a double-blind process. Authors do not know the peer reviewers, and peer reviewers do not know the authors of the papers they are reviewing. When peer reviewers are selected to review an article, they receive an email invitation to review that specific article asking that they either accept or decline after viewing the article's abstract. If the invitation is accepted, a follow-up email is sent providing a direct link to the article to be reviewed. Peer reviewers who have not registered with Editorial Manager previously will be asked to register when clicking on the link provided in the email. If the invitation is declined or neither link is clicked, the reviewer will be removed from the request queue for this article, and the next selected peer reviewer will be sent an invitation.

Once the reviewer accesses the article PDF, they review the manuscript and then submit their decision recommendation, comments for the author, and confidential comments for the editor. The decision recommendation is selected from a drop-down menu; comments can be entered directly into the fields provided or uploaded as an attachment by clicking the "Upload Attachment" button. Reviewed papers usually receive careful scrutiny by 2-3 reviewers and additional assessment by the responsible associate editor, deputy editor, and editor-in-chief. Initial screening results in rejection of the majority of manuscripts within 2 weeks of submission. For those papers that are selected for review, the time to first decision is about 2-3 months. Overall time from submission to acceptance, which includes revisions by the authors, is about 4 months.