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Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

Peer Review

Peer review is the main step in appraising the academic quality and literature value of submitted manuscripts and is also the most important step in the entire handling process. Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (BCAS) adopts the international customary two-way anonymous review system (i.e., double blind peer review system) to ensure objectivity and fairness in this step. The review rules and details are as follows.

Review Rules

• At least 2 reviewers should be invited to review each manuscript.
• The reviewers and authors should not belong to the same institution (university) and should not have a close association. For example, they should not have a teacher-student relationship or should not be students of the same teacher.
• Double-blind review (the names of reviewers and authors should remain undisclosed).
• Manuscripts on interdisciplinary subjects should be sent to reviewers of different majors for review.

Selection Rules for Reviewers

• The selection of reviewers will be made in consultation with BCAS dynamic reviewer database, references of the submitted manuscripts, and large-scale literature retrieval platforms.
• The reviewers should be selected according to the subject terms or main keywords of the submitted manuscripts to ensure the consistency of research interests.
• The authentication of reviewers’ academic attainments is mainly based on the articles they have published in authoritative publications worldwide, as well as their academic influence.
• The reviewers’ credibility will be determined by their earnest attitude in reviewing manuscripts and on whether they can finish the review with their review comments in timely manner.
• Whether the reviewers have sufficient time and ambition will be an important consideration for the editorial board to select them as reviewers.
• The reviewers who are deemed to be able to figure out the approximate scope of authors through the content of the article will be excluded from the reviewer selection of the article.

Screening Rules for Review Results

The reviewer’s opinions comprise 4 categories: Agree to publish/Publish after revision/Rereview after major revision/Reject the manuscript.

We encourage academic contention for manuscripts with divergent review opinions. Editorial Office will attach importance to the objectivity and impartiality of review opinions to ensure that the evaluation on academic standards of reviewed manuscripts will not be affected by factors such as political views, gender, region, etc.

Ethics

Editors, editorial board members, and reviewers should ensure that the peer review process is fair, impartial, and timely.

BCAS adopts a double-blind review process, and editors should avoid selecting editorial board members who have a conflict of interest with the author to review the manuscript, and editorial board members should avoid selecting peer reviewers who have a conflict of interest with the author to enter the peer review process. At the same time, full consideration should be given to the author’s request if deemed reasonable, such as to avoid reviewing the manuscript by specific peer reviewers.