All papers received by the editors of the journal «Izvestiya Irkutskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta». Seriya «Nauki o Zemle» («The Bulletin of Irkutsk State University». Series «Earth Sciences») are compulsory to peer-review.
The editor and the executive secretary of the series forward the paper for reviewing to acknowledged experts in a related scientific area (Dr.Sc. or Cand.Sc) and having articles on the subject matter of the article under review in the last 3 years.The author or the co-author of the paper cannot be a reviewer.
Period of review should not exceed two weeks.
Reviewer is provided with Author guidelines and Review form where the following information should be filled out:
give the title of the paper and the authors;
give the type of the material: experimental/theoretical/applied/overview; a short report, description of new methodology, experiment;
give (if necessary) additional characteristic of the paper;
specify if the paper corresponds to the gist of the journal; characterize the style of presentation (clear, condensed, needs reduction/rewriting, unnecessarily abundant in formulas/ figures/tables, reference list should be expanded, design of the text/graphics should be improved);
reflect the scientific content of the material (original, fully or partly published before, contains new experimental/theoretical data; does not contain significantly new research results, contains a number of false statements, data);
give comments and recommendations: a) if the content of the paper corresponds to its title, b) to what extent the paper meets contemporary achievements in the considered scientific field,) the form of the presentation of the material, d) ground for the paper publication, e) a detailed description of the paper strong and weak points.
Reviewing is anonymous.
The author of the paper can get the review upon his written request but without the reviewer’s signature, name, position or workplace given. Anonymity can be broken only if the reviewer agreed to talk to the author, or if the reviewer declared plagiarism or falsification of the materials in the paper.
If the paper is recommended to be corrected and finalized, the executive secretary of the series sends the text of the review to the author and suggests preparing a new version of the paper with the remarks considered or giving arguments in refutation. Once the paper revised, it is resent for reviewing.
If the reviewer does not recommend the paper for publication, the Editorial Board can submit the work to review to another expert. If two reviewers appear to disagree, the paper is sent to a third expert.
The Editorial Board shall take the final decision on publication of the manuscript and it gets recorded in the minutes of the Editorial Board meeting.
Not accepted for publication:
o papers of poor format the authors refused to do technical revision;
o papers the authors did not implement constructive remarks of the reviewer or refuted them.
Once the Editorial Board made the final publication decision, the executive secretary informs the author of the decision and the date of publication.
The Editorial Board shall send a well-grounded refusal to the author if the paper is refused in publication.
The reviews are kept in the publishing office and Editorial Board for five years and can be presented on request of Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.
