Peer Review Policy

Every research article, review article, case report, and short communication in an SSG journal is reviewed by at least two independent experts before it is accepted. Editorials and corrections are the only exception, and they are labelled as such.

SSG journals use double-anonymous peer review. Reviewers do not know who the authors are, and authors do not know who the reviewers are. Authors submit a separate title page and a manuscript with all identifying information removed. The editorial office checks the anonymised file before sending it out for review.

• Reviewers are researchers with recent publications on the topic of the manuscript.
• Reviewers come from outside the journal's editorial team. A board member may act as an additional reviewer. However, at least two reviewers on every manuscript must be independent of the editorial board.
• A handling editor never reviews a manuscript they are handling.
• Reviewers must not work at the same institution as any author, and must declare any other conflict of interest, including recent collaboration. The editor decides whether a declared conflict prevents the review (see Competing Interests and Funding).

1. Technical check (usually 3 to 7 days): the editorial office checks scope, formatting, completeness of declarations, anonymisation, and similarity (see Publication Ethics, section 2.2).
2. Editorial screening (usually 5 to 10 days): the handling editor decides whether to send the manuscript for review or reject it without review. A desk rejection always comes with a short explanation.
3. Peer review: reviewers are given about one month. A full review round, including inviting reviewers, usually takes 2 to 2.5 months. At least two reviewer reports are collected. If the reports disagree sharply, or are not enough, the editor may invite a third or further reviewer.
4. Decision: accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject. Every decision letter includes the reviewer reports, plus the editor's own comments where needed.
5. Revision: the time allowed is normally 15 days for minor revisions and 30 days for major revisions. Authors explain point by point how they responded to each comment. After a major revision, the manuscript normally goes back to the original reviewers.
6. Acceptance: once the reviewers' concerns have been adequately addressed, the Editor-in-Chief, or a delegated editor, makes the final decision.
7. Language check and production: the editorial office checks the language (about 10 days). After the authors approve the language check, production takes about 20 days. The manuscript is then published with its received, revised, accepted, and published dates.

From submission to publication usually takes 3 to 4 months, and can take up to 6 months. These are typical times, not promises.

Each journal publishes its time to first editorial decision and its acceptance rate, taken from its submission system, and updates them every year.

• Originality and contribution to the field
• Soundness of methods, and whether the data support the conclusions
• Whether the research was conducted ethically and reported transparently, including data availability and conflicts of interest
• Clarity of writing, structure, figures, and tables
• Whether the references are relevant and appropriate. Reviewers report any request, by anyone, to cite unrelated work.

Manuscripts under review are confidential. Reviewers must not share them, discuss them with others, or use their content before publication. Reviewers must not upload any part of a manuscript or its review into generative AI tools. Doing so breaches confidentiality (see Generative AI Policy). If a reviewer wants a junior colleague to help, they must ask the editor first and name that person.

Manuscripts in special issues and extended conference papers go through the same review process as regular submissions. A guest editor never handles a manuscript they co-authored, or one from their own institution. Those manuscripts are handled by the Editor-in-Chief or another editor with no conflict of interest. Conference papers are only published in the journal after full peer review, and they must be substantially extended (see Preprints and Prior Publication).

Reviewers receive a review certificate from SSG on request. Editors rate the quality of each review. Reviewers who repeatedly produce superficial or inappropriate reviews are not invited again.

SSG and its journals never promise acceptance, or a fixed time to publication, before peer review is complete. Paying an APC, buying a service, or attending an SSG conference never guarantees publication.

Editorial and peer-review decisions are based solely on the scholarly merit of the manuscript. Whether an author has used any SSG service (including Author Services and StepSphere) is not known to editors or reviewers and plays no part in the process. See Editorial Independence and Separation of Commercial Services.