WORLD JOURNAL OF MICROBIOLOGY AND BIOTECHNOLOGY
GUIDELINES FOR REFEREES


Introduction
The World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology is unusual in the range of quality of papers submitted to it and receives a very high proportion of manuscripts submitted by authors who are very inexperienced in scientific writing, as well as often having a very limited command of the English language. By the time a manuscript gets to a referee the worst of the manuscripts will have been filtered out; the Editors do not wish to waste referees' valuable time with unpublishable material. Nevertheless, it is the Journal's policy to consider manuscripts from any part of the world that contain good microbiology, and the fact that a piece of work uses limited research facilities or deals with subjects of restricted interest to readers in developed nations does not mean that the material is unimportant and should not be published.

You as a referee are essential to our existence as a journal. Without your valuable time, scientific work could not be adequately evaluated. We appreciate your help and always welcome suggestions for improvement of the reviewing process.

The manuscript
 An unpublished manuscript is a privileged document. It comes to you before anyone else except authors and editors knows that it exists. We ask you under no circumstances to refer, in conversation or in print, to the work that the manuscript describes before it has been published. Under no circumstances should you use the information it contains for advancement of your own work

We hope that you will adopt a positive, impartial attitude towards the manuscript under review with the objective of promoting effective and accurate scientific communication. If you think that you are unable to judge a particular manuscript impartially please return it to the editor at once, saying why.

Time-scale
You will receive an E-mail from the editorial office notifying you of a request to review, and giving you a username and password  to access the Editorial Manager web site. You will always have an opportunity to view a manuscript and its summary before agreeing to review it. If you agree, we ask you to do your best to complete the review within two weeks of you downloading the manuscript. If you know, or if it turns out, that you are unable to complete the review within that time, please E-mail the editorial office and tell them so. If having agreed to review it, having downloaded it and read it, you find that you do not wish to handle that particular manuscript, please E-mail the editorial office at once with the names of one or two persons whom you would consider competent to review that manuscript.

Things to consider
Do not attempt to review the manuscript by viewing the computer screen, download the FDF and print it out.
 In your review, consider the following aspects of the manuscript:

You are not requested to correct style, language or grammar, but if an alternative, clearer expression of the phrase is readily evident to you, please indicate the wording on the printout of the manuscript or in your report. If you wish to make annotations that you think would be useful to the authors you can download a copy of the manuscript in word-processing format, which you should annotate using the "Track changes" facility in the Tools menu of MicroSoft Word. Please destroy any printout after review. Any errors which a copy editor might not recognize, such as misspellings of chemical names, incorrect or outmoded terminology, inappropriate scientific jargon etc., should be pointed out.

It is the policy of the WJMB to give positive feedback to inexperienced authors, so if you have time to put comments on the manuscript, these are always welcome.

Contacting the authors
 Under no circumstances should you contact the authors to discuss matters directly, as your views on the paper may not agree with those of the editor or the other referee.

Writing your report and completing the assessment
Your report should always be in two parts: comments for transmission to the author and comments for the editor only. Please do not include comments about the acceptability of the paper in the section to be sent to the author, make your recommendation about this on the section for the editor. The responsibility for acceptance or rejection lies with the editor (see below). Make your suggestions in as neutral and dispassionate a way as possible and please do not make suggestions for revision sound as though they are conditions for acceptance.

It facilitates editorial response to authors if you present the comments in your report as items in a numbered list, which if you wish may be divided into major and minor points. The Editors reserve the right to modify or make changes in the version of the report that is sent to the authors.

Confidential remarks to the editor about the manuscript should be in the appropriate section. Please indicate which points you think should be prerequisites for acceptance after revision. Please substantiate any statements you make about the quality or novelty of the work and avoid dogmatic dismissive comments. The editor has to balance your judgement with his/her own and that of the other referee, so it will sometimes happen that your recommendations will not be followed. This is more likely to be that a manuscript for which you suggest revision is rejected. It is unlikely that any manuscript for which you suggest rejection will be accepted, unless in a drastically changed form.

If you return an annotated manuscript with comments and changes on it, you will need to attach the MS-Word file to your E-mail report. However if you have not marked corrections on the manuscript, go to the Editorial Manager web site, log in and E-mail your report as instructed. Please dispose of the printed out manuscript as indicated above.

Keep a copy of your report in your files. This is for two possible reasons. In certain circumstances the manuscript may be sent to you again after it has been resubmitted after revision, if the revision was extensive. In addition, if the WJMB rejects the manuscript, and it is submitted to another journal, you may be asked by another editor to review the manuscript, and it will save you much time if you still have a copy of your previous report.

Thank you for your help.

Last revised 8 January, 2007.

This document was posted by Peter J.Large, Editor, World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology. Click my name for E-mail link.I am grateful to Dr Tom Jeffries, Madison, Wisconsin, for valuable suggestions.