Review Policy / Journal Wood Sci

Contributed papers (Original articles, Notes, Rapid communications, and Review articles) are all subject to review to decide their acceptance or rejection. Judging the merit of a paper's contents falls to its reader, and responsibility for a paper's contents rests with the author, but the review will determine whether the paper does or does not meet established criteria. The Editorial Board of the Japan Wood Research Society has established the following review policy for contributed papers.

Contributed papers will be reviewed with respect to their appropriateness to the field of wood science and their contribution to it, in accordance with the following points, followed by a decision whether publication is possible or not. The points (1)-(3) are applied to Original articles, Notes, Rapid communications, and (4)-(5) applied to Review articles.

(1) Originality: The paper's contents must not be common knowledge, previously published, or easily derived from existing knowledge.

(2) Usefulness: The paper's contents must have merit based on a degree of scientific or practical significance.

(3) Trustworthiness: The arguments set forth, the conclusions etcetera must show sufficient foundation to be trustworthy.

(4) Objectivity: In the review article each research must be reviewed fairly from an objective and scientific point of view.

(5) Comprehensiveness: The review article must introduce researches on selected topics comprehensively and non-autobiographically.

(6) Currentness: The review article must show a recent trend of research on selected topics.

Furthermore, the contents must be described concisely and clearly in a manner fully understandable for the reader, they must be free of errors, and the paper must be organized and described following the regulations for contributions and the rules for writing of the important points.

It is desired in principle that the paper fulfill the various provisions shown above, but as illustrated below, depending on the type of paper and its contents, the placement of emphasis in the review can vary.

For Original articles, a high degree of originality is required, but in cases where there is an extremely high level of practical usefulness, originality need not be of an equally high level.

For Rapid communications, emphasis is placed on originality.

For Notes, emphasis is placed on usefulness and trustworthiness.

For Review articles, emphasis is placed on such topics as trends in recent research relating to specific problems.

3. Referees

For contributed papers two referees will be selected by the Editorial Board. However, for review articles requested by the Editorial Board there will be only one referee. Referees will remain anonymous. Contact with authors will be entirely made through the Editorial Board, and there will be no direct contact between referees and authors.

4. Results of the review

After the paper has undergone a comprehensive review in accordance with the criteria of each of the above clauses, one of the following judgments will be made.

(1) May be published as submitted.

(2) May be published after consideration of indicated points and revision.

(3) After revision by the author, needs to be examined again by the referees.

(4) May be better to reject (when contents that would merit publication are not included, or when it should not be published).

In the case of papers judged (2) or (3), conditions for publication must be concretely shown, and therefore the manuscript must be revised according to the points indicated. When judgment is for (2), revision of the essence of the contents will as a rule not be a condition for publication.

When two referees both render judgment (1), the review is complete and publication is possible.

When two referees both render judgment (4), it results in rejection.

When one referee's judgment is (4), a review will be made again by another referee, and if this referee also makes judgment (4), it will result in rejection.

5. Recommendation terms for the electronic submission-tracking site

For the electronic submission-tracking site, Editorial Manager^®, the judgments discribed in the immediately preceding clause are expressed by the following recommendation terms.

(1) Accept

(2) Minor Revision

(3) Major Revision

(4) Reject

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