In all journals, peer-reviewing aims to ensure the integrity and validity of research findings; all serious journals use a rigorous process to determine this. The submission review process is the main tool we have to ensure that new scientific knowledge published is honest, accurate, ethical, and valuable. In effect, it acts as a measure of quality assurance and ‘certifies’ the new knowledge. 

The journals of the ISI go a step beyond this. We are a mentoring organization, and so our editors-in-chief assist reviewers and editors by being coaches and guides to the authors, reviewers, and editors. We use the paper review process to support authors by providing them with mentoring suggestions on ways to improve their work. We do this by packaging constructive and informed feedback using best practices methods gleaned from the literature. For example, our suggestions are do-able and concrete. We treat authors with respect.

All ISI journals follow ISI’s policy regarding the paper review process. ISI’s policy is that rejections for issues like lack of novelty should occur at the desk review stage. 

Once a paper has been reviewed, it can still be rejected for lack of novelty or any other issue. But we agree to take seriously our choice to accept pending revision. If, after reviewing the editor’s comments, the Editor and the EiC choose to accept the paper for publication pending revision, the journal’s editorial staff agrees to work with the author to make the paper publishable. This is our contract with the author. Not all papers accepted pending revision are published. The author may indicate to the system “No Intention to Revise,” or may upload two documents. The first is the revised paper that addresses the mentoring concerns brought up in the development letter. The second document (the revisions document) shows each of the concerns from the development letter and indicates how you, the author, addressed (or did not address) each concern.  

Another unique feature of our journals is that we provide the authors with developmental suggestions that point out those do-able improvements needed for the paper to become publishable. We provide these suggestions even for papers we reject as part of our mission of mentorship.

Most commonly, we can work with the author to make the accepted paper fully publishable over a few rounds of revision. Our goal is to provide the author with a development letter that is clear to minimize the number of rounds of revision necessary. Typically, the papers we publish require several rounds of revision.