Reviewer Guidelines

Thank you if you have agreed to review a manuscript submitted to Journal of Petrology.

Our mission is to provide a useful resource to the wider Earth and Planetary Science community by publishing articles that are of international interest and significantly advance our understanding of igneous and metamorphic processes. Quality is of utmost importance, and we ask our reviewers to help us to identify those manuscripts that reach the high levels of academic rigor required for publication in the journal.

If there are any aspects of the research presented which you feel unable to assess, please state this in your comments to the editor.

If you have any questions please contact the Editorial Office: [email protected].

Reviewer recognition

Journal of Petrology has partnered with Publons to give our reviewers credit for the reviews they undertake for the journal. Through our integrated submission site, peer review on the journal will be recorded and verified where a reviewer elects to have this recognition posted to their Publons profile. Reviewers for the journal will be able to seamlessly build their profiles on Publons, gaining recognition and credit for the important work they do.

Conflicts of interest

In order to maintain the integrity of the peer review process and to eliminate bias, we ask reviewers to ensure that they do not have a conflict of interest before agreeing to review the manuscript. As a reviewer, your task is to critically and constructively judge the content of a manuscript. A conflict of interest would for example be:

• your PhD student or PhD advisor;
• family relations;
• people at your current institution;
• people whose research you fund or who fund you;
• collaborators in the past two years.

Reviewing of the manuscript

Suitability of research for publication in Journal of Petrology is based on the academic rigor of research presented, and quality of the presentation, as well as overall interest to the broader field.

As a reviewer, it is important that you remain objective in your critical appraisal. Your comments should be professional, courteous, and respectful, and should help the author to improve their paper and present their research as clearly and concisely as possible. In other words, you are not judging the authors, but the submitted script. The authors' experience should be a positive one. If changes are requested, these should be appropriate to the scope of the paper, achievable in a reasonable timeframe and necessary – it’s important to avoid the pitfall of asking for onerous revisions just for the sake of ‘something to say’. If you have reasons to believe that the material is not original or has been plagiarised, please alert the handling editor or the editorial office.

We ask our reviewers to consider the following when assessing manuscripts for suitability in Journal of Petrology:

• Appropriateness regarding the scope of the Journal
• Significance to the Journal readership in advancing understanding
• Originality
• Appropriateness of the approach or experimental design
• Adequacy of experimental techniques
• Data accessibility and quality (specification of international standards, blanks, and estimates of reproducibility)
• Appropriateness of statistical analyses
• Appropriate literature citations
• Soundness of interpretations and conclusions
• Relevance of discussion, and appropriateness of tone when discussing previously published work
• Organization
• Adequacy of title and abstract
• Appropriateness of figures and tables
• Appropriateness of supplemental material intended for posting (if applicable)

Good reviews will contain general comments on the overall nature and aim of the manuscript as well as specific comments on the text and figures (with reference to line numbers to help communication) and recommendations for improvement. We do not expect reviewers to do grammatical and language corrections.

Making your recommendation to the Editor

Tick boxes are provided at the top of your review page to make your recommendation (acceptable in its present form, with minor/moderate/major revisions, or unacceptable) to the Editor. Note that these are recommendations to the Editor, not to the Authors. Thus, please refrain from stating your recommendation in your comments to the authors.

How long will a review take?

The length of time it takes to review depends on the paper and the reviewer’s availability and experience in reviewing. For the comprehensive studies published in Journal of Petrology, reviews will generally take at least one day. We recommend reading through the paper first, making a note of any major concerns or comments you may have. Then, using the online form provided, write a more detailed discussion of your thoughts on the paper. It may be worth writing your comments a few days before you submit them, as this allows you to review your writing with fresh eyes to check the tone and content of your assessment.

You will be given a deadline for the review. However, if the date specified poses a problem, please contact the Editor as early as possible to discuss amending it.

Ethical guidelines

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), so you may want to read their guidelines for reviewers at https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-cope.pdf, which address important considerations, including:

• Please consult the Editor if you have a potential conflict, or decline this invitation if you have a known conflict, with the author(s) and/or the content itself.
• We rely on reviewers for conducting reviews in accordance with, and in order to uphold, the standards of the journal. While there are potential opportunities arising from generative AI, please ensure these types of tools and resources are not used as a substitute for your expert opinion and do not supersede your own judgment.
• Maintaining confidentiality both throughout and following the review process is important, so please do not share information about this manuscript, its content, or your review with any person or entity, including Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI tools.