BSSA, SRL and TSR Reviewer Guidelines
Thank you for agreeing to review a paper for BSSA, SRL or TSR. The quality and timeliness of the journals rely on the volunteer efforts of referees, and these efforts are greatly appreciated. Our community depends on your thorough feedback to authors so that published research is the highest quality possible.
Conflict of Interest Standards for Reviewers
SSA is committed to upholding the integrity of the work published in its journals. Scientific research, and the preparation of the results, must be free of any impropriety or undisclosed conflicts of interest. SSA’s conflict of interest standards for reviewers are based on the standards and best practices developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and reviewers are expected to follow the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.
The first and most important part of your review is a written commentary on the paper’s strengths and weaknesses, and on its suitability for publication in BSSA, SRL or TSR. Please include in your commentary any suggestions for improving both the text and the figures. Authors are not required to provide high resolution files until the paper is accepted, but if you are unable to evaluate a figure because of its quality, you can contact the editorial office and they will request an improved file from the author.
Another important part of your review is the “Reviewer Form” and comments meant only for the Editors.
Instructions for All Reviewers
When you have prepared your review, following the instructions below, please log in to Editorial Manager as a reviewer. You can do this through the link in the email we sent you when you accepted the review or by using your log in name and password on the site (see links below). Note that, for security reasons, the links in the email expire after several uses or a period of time. If that happens, you must login on the home page (see links at bottom of page).
- If you choose to waive anonymity, please include your name in the “Reviewer Comments to Author.”
- Annotated manuscripts can also be very useful for the authors. This can be done by inserting comments into the PDF file using a program such as Adobe Acrobat or by marking up the manuscript by hand and then scanning the pages into a computer file. Note that the system has a file size limit of 10MB. Please note that if your review contains figures, complicated equations, or tables, then you may not be able to enter your review into the box labeled “Reviewer Comments to Author.” These files can then be uploaded as companion files to your review.
- WARNING ON ANONYMITY: Word processing files, image files, and PDF files uploaded as part of your review may contain your identity in their property fields and other places. The online system removes identifying information from Microsoft Office files including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files as well as Adobe PDF files. For the system to recognize the file type, the file name must contain the suffix such as .doc, .docx, .pdf, etc. For other types of files, if you do not remove your name from these fields, we cannot guarantee your anonymity.
- The second part of your review is the Reviewer Confidential Comments to Editor, which begins with a series of questions about the manuscript.
- After the series of questions, you may include comments meant only for the editors and not for the authors.
Once you have filled out the Reviewer Comments to Author and Reviewer Confidential Comments to Editor boxes, as well as uploaded any companion files, please click Proceed on the reviewer form to submit your completed review on our online submission system. When our online submission system has successfully received your review, you will receive a confirmation email.
If you have any questions about the review process or have trouble accessing the online submission system, please email the BSSA Editorial Office at bssamss@seismosoc.org, the SRL Editorial Office at srl@seismosoc.org, or the TSR Editorial Office at tsr@seismosoc.org.
Additional Instructions for TSR Reviewers
TSR’s mission is to respond rapidly to recent events and current topics. TSR requires shorter turnaround times for authors and reviewers, and the journal only publishes short-form original research articles that are no longer than 3500 words.
- Where needed, please encourage authors to follow our submission guidelines:
- No more than 3500 words, excluding references, figure and table captions (inclusive of Abstract, Declaration of Competing Interests, Data and Resources section)
- No more than five (5) figures and/or tables
- No more than 30 references
- All essential information to the manuscript must be included in the article. Supplemental Material may be included at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief; however, it must not contain essential article information. If the manuscript you have been invited to review includes Supplemental Material, we kindly ask you to include it in your review.
BSSA online submission and peer review homepage