Transparency

DOUBLE PEER BLIND REVIEW PROCEDURE FOR THE SMC MAGAZINE

The SMC Magazine provides for a blind review by two Referees under anonymous shape of the paper sent by one or more authors.
The procedure is arranged according to the following stages:

• The Editorial Board establishes the Topics for the “Focus” regarding the new issue of the magazine and process the Call, which will then be published on the web site of the Magazine (sustainablemediterraneanconstruction.eu) and diffused via e-mail to the interested scientific community.
• The authors, who intend to publish their contributions, submit an “abstract”, according to the procedures indicated in the Call; the contents should cover studies and research coherent with the Magazine’s subjects or with the specific Topics of the “Focus” of the issue to be published.
• The Editorial Committee evaluates the abstracts according to the following criteria:

         - Suitability to the magazine’s Mission and/or to the specific topic of the issue to be published;

         - Originality of the research subject and methodology;

         - Scientific approach of the results, even if partially achieved

• The evaluation result is forwarded to the authors, according to the requirements indicated in the “Call”. The accepted abstract’s authors/author should submit the full manuscript in English within the deadline indicated in the call. The review procedure starts after the correct and complete reception of all the material needed to be undergone to the review process.
• The referee procedure is run by means of a “double peer blind review”, during which the full papers in English to be reviewed are sent to two different referees, included in the list annually published in the Magazine.

The authors do never come to knowledge of the referees’ name who had reviewed their work. Experts of the various scientific sectors, who are available to play the work of revision, had accepted and have been engaged in running this task, by means of a subscription of a signed acceptance format, and the submission of their Curriculum Vitae, belong to the International Referee Board.

The Editorial Board, under the supervision of the Director of the magazine, defines, for each submitted contribution, the referee couple which, according to the relative expertise, result more compatible with the subjects of the submitted full paper.
Moreover, in order to freely carry out the revision activity without prejudices, any reference which can attribute the paper to the author/authors is deleted before the stage of transmission to the referees (eventual notes, bibliographic references, location, research connections and so on), so providing an anonymous format. The referees receive, contextually with the written work to be reviewed, also an empty format to fill (Assessment worksheet), which includes: assessment criteria, option of acceptance or not of the full paper, comments for authors, notes for the editor, the final score and the reasons for eventual rejection.

• The work should obtain a unanimous judgment from both the referees and it will be accepted or rejected; in case of discordance between the two judgments, a third referee is required, whose assessment allows to achieve the majority of judgment (2 under 3), and so the final response for the paper is assigned. The Referees, which had provided, together with the paper acceptance, also the comments and the notes, contribute, with their advices, to improve the object of assessment.
• The complex referees’ judgment is processed by the Committee and then communicated to the author or authors who proceed to eventual reviews and then to the final writing of the article - which includes both the corrected English version and the author’s mother-tongue one - according to the format required by the Editorial Committee of the magazine.