Peer review policies
China Geology operates a single blind review process. All contributions will be initially assessed by the China Geology Editorial Office for suitability for the journal. Suitable papers are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The China Geology Editorial Office is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles.
Peer review process
To save time for authors and peer-reviewers, we only send out papers that meet our editorial criteria for formal review. The China Geology Editorial Office will make a decision based on the reviewers' advice, from among several possibilities:
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Accept, with or without editorial revisions
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Invite the authors to minor or major revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached
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Reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission
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Final reject, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems
We appreciate the time that referees devote to assessing the manuscripts. In particular, many submitted manuscripts contain large volumes of additional (supplementary) data and other material, which take time for referees to evaluate. We thank our referees for their continued commitment to our publication process and to help recognize this effort. We use ScholarOne Manuscript systems for referee to evaluate the papers. This can be found on the tab of the referee on China Geology website.