Open peer review

Drylands will operate open peer review for full transparency about decision-making and in order to mitigate issues that contribute to editorial bias, and to enable reviewers to collect their contributions as part of their academic record. Reviewers are strongly encouraged to consent to the publication of their review(s) with an attribution and accompanying ORCID, but can now opt to remain anonymous.  Where reviewers opt for Full Attribution, review reports are published with the reviewer name and ORCID; where reviewers opt to remain anonymous, review reports are published with a consistent alias (Reviewer 1, Reviewer 2, Reviewer 3 etc.) that enables end-users to distinguish contributions by multiple anonymous reviewers.  All reviews are assigned an item-level DOI and are accompanied by a reviewer Conflict of Interest Declaration regardless of the anonymity preferences of the contributor.

Open peer review does not mean that reviewers should contact authors directly, or that authors should contact reviewers. All queries should be directed through the Editorial Office; drylands@cambridge.org.

Guidance for Peer Reviewers

If we need your help with reviewing a manuscript, we will email you and ask you to accept or decline the invitation through our submission site. If you accept, you will be asked to submit your report in a field box in ScholarOne. You will not be able to attach or upload any documents.

Before writing your review you may find it helpful to browse our Instructions for authors.

• We need your agreement to have you review published online with your name associated, and to make it available under a CC-BY open access licence.
• You will also need to sign the Conflict of Interest declaration, and detail any competing personal, professional or financial interests that could be perceived as an influence on evaluating the work under review, or confirming that no such competing interests exist by entering the response “Reviewer declares none”.
• Example wording for a Conflicts of Interest declaration is as follows: “Reviewer is employed at company B/owns shares in company D/ is on the Board of company E/is a member of organisation F/ has received grants from company H.” If no Conflicts of Interest exist, the declaration should state “Reviewer declares none”.
• We need you to recommend a decision for the paper.
• The Comments to the Author section enables you to detail points that require amending/clarification. These comments will be published online readers will see these comments. If you choose to sign your review, authors and readers will know who has reviewed their work. Therefore, please do not make any comments that you do not wish the author (or the whole community) to see. There is a suggested limit of 500 words for this section to encourage succinct and informative reviews.

As Cambridge Prisms: Drylands aims to be a fast publication journal, we are recommending that reviews be returned within ten days where possible. Please do let us know if you need extra time, or if you are unavailable so that we can approach alternative reviewers.

We ask reviewers to help us ensure that experiments published in Cambridge Prisms: Drylands are scientifically credible and ethical. Reviewers should judge whether the experiment was well conducted and designed, and the data is valid. The editorial team will make the final decision to accept or reject a manuscript, based on the reviewers’ comments. Attached files should not be submitted alongside your response to reviewers nor should they be emailed to the editorial office to ensure all comments to authors can be published in open peer review. 

Becoming a reviewer

If you would like to become a reviewer for Cambridge Prisms: Drylands, please register at the journal’s Submission site.

Resources

Introductory resources for peer reviewers can be found on Cambridge Core here.

Ethics

Guidance on ethical peer review can be found on Cambridge Core here.