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Peer review, editorial standards and processes

Editorial independence

Editorial independence is respected. The content of Royal Society journals is entirely independent of the Society’s views on any scientific or policy issues. The editor’s decision is final and will not be influenced or compromised in any way by the Society.

Peer review systems

Most papers submitted to Royal Society research journals are peer reviewed in a single-anonymized fashion (author names are not concealed, but referee names are), while Notes and Records and Proceedings B are double-anonymized.

We do all we can to ensure the peer review process is fair and we aim to minimise bias, measures include:

  • Striving to have a diverse representation on our editorial boards. We actively encourage board members to select from a diverse pool of reviewers – some of these being suggested by authors
  • Regularly reminding board members, reviewers and staff to be aware of their unconscious biases when making decisions
  • Working with other publishers to collect anonymised diversity data to assess where there are potential biases in our peer review system

Open Biology accepts the transfer of peer-reviewed preprints directly from the Review Commons online portal into the editorial workflow, where they are assessed for publication without restarting the peer review process.

For Royal Society Open Science, Open Biology and Proceedings B, publication of peer review information (anonymous by default unless the reviewer signs their report) is mandatory. For Proceedings A and Biology Letters, we offer authors the option to publish peer review information.

Unless published with the article, the referee reports and other correspondence relating to your paper must remain confidential and should not be shared or made publicly available. If discussions between an author, editor, and referee have taken place in confidence they will remain in confidence unless explicit consent has been given by all parties or there are exceptional circumstances. Referees inputting manuscript details into generative AI tools is prohibited. AI tools provide no guarantee of where data are being sent, saved, viewed, or used in the future.

For submissions to the Philosophical Transactions journals, the guest editor of the issue manages the review process and is encouraged to seek at least two referees for each paper.

Editors or board members are never involved in editorial decisions about their own work and in these cases papers may be referred to other editors or the editor-in-chief.

Edits to reviews are kept to an absolute minimum. Edits address only issues of tone, language, and deviations from journal policy and reviewer guidelines, and will not change the meaning or intention of the review.

The Royal Society does not tolerate abusive behaviour or correspondence towards its staff, academic editors, authors or reviewers. Any author of a paper submitted to a Royal Society journal who engages in abusive behaviour or correspondence will have their paper immediately withdrawn from consideration for publication by the journal concerned. Consideration of subsequent submissions to Royal Society journals will be at the discretion of the Editor.

Further guidance is provided in the 'Information for Reviewers' section of each journal website.

Co-review

A co-reviewer is defined as a researcher - often early in their career - or technician who reviews a manuscript together with a more senior (invited) reviewer. When used appropriately it is a valuable learning experience that we are happy to support. The senior reviewer is limited to one appropriately qualified co-reviewer per review.

The review process is strictly confidential and must be treated as such by reviewers during the review process and subsequently. To provide accountability and appropriate credit, the name and status (eg PhD student) of the co-reviewer should be disclosed on submission of the review.

The senior reviewer should be the main point of contact and is ultimately accountable for the review. The senior reviewer and co-reviewer should agree on the wording of the review, and the same principles relating to confidentiality and competing interests apply to both reviewers.

For journals where we publish peer review information, there is the option for the senior reviewer to disclose their name to obtain credit. In addition, there is the opportunity to include the co-reviewer’s name too, provided they have given consent.

Appeals

Authors have a right to appeal editorial decisions.

The author should submit the grounds for their appeal to the editorial office, addressed to the editor. Authors are discouraged from directly contacting editorial board members and editors with appeals.

Following an appeal, all editorial decisions are final.

Editors will mediate all exchanges between authors and referees during the peer review process (i.e. prior to publication). If agreement cannot be reached, editors may consider inviting comments from additional referee(s) if appropriate.

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