Evaluation and review process
Triage and editorial prioritisation
Upon submission, all articles are screened promptly by the editorial team. Decisions on whether to reject or send for peer review are usually made within 1 week from submission for regular articles and within 2 days for rapid communications.
Peer review process and reviewer selection
Manuscripts that pass the first evaluation will be sent for peer review. Regular articles are sent to at least two independent experts in the field. Rapid communications are sent to at least one expert and scrutinised intensively during the editing process. Additional reviewers may be invited as needed.
The editors take great care in selecting and matching qualified experts to review submitted manuscripts. Each reviewer is chosen based on several criteria, including but not limited to subject matter and methodological expertise, publication record, and geographic diversity. A selected reviewer is a person working outside the research team or the department of the authors, and is usually from a different institute and/or country.
Eurosurveillance follows a policy of author- and reviewer-anonymised peer review where both the authors’ and the reviewers’ identities are kept confidential. Reviewers suggested by authors may be considered, however, they will be complemented by a second reviewer who was not suggested. Experts explicitly opposed by authors are not invited.
Eurosurveillance encourages peer reviewers to involve early-career researchers (ECR) in the peer review process for articles in the following categories: Research articles, Surveillance articles, Outbreak reports and Reviews.
Review timeline and tracking your submission
Identifying suitable experts, securing their agreement, and allowing sufficient opportunity for a thorough evaluation takes time. While we make every effort to avoid unnecessary delays, the peer review process depends on the availability and cooperation of invited referees. Authors should be aware that these steps, although they may sometimes appear lengthy, are critical to a fair and rigorous editorial process.
In the online submission system, authors can track the status of their submission. They can contact the editorial office to ask for updates about their manuscript by sending an ad hoc email through the submission system (via ‘Action links’) or by an email to [email protected].
Editorial evaluation after peer review
Once the reviews are received in the submission system, the editors evaluate the article thoroughly and decide whether to proceed with the manuscript or reject it, taking into consideration the reviewers’ comments and recommendations. If the reviewers' opinions are conflicting, the article may also be sent to an additional reviewer or to a board member for support before a decision is taken. The editorial team applies reporting guidelines’ checklists during evaluation, where applicable and as appropriate for the study in question.
If the decision is made to proceed with the manuscript, the reviewers’ comments and editorial guidance are sent to the authors for a revision of their manuscript. Reviewers’ comments are usually not edited. On rare occasions, the editors may amend comments before they are sent to the authors, such as removing language not deemed appropriate or passages that are intended as recommendations for the editor rather than the authors.
When at least two reviews are obtained (for all regular articles and for some rapid communications), the anonymised comments for the authors can be accessed through the submission system by the other reviewer(s) of the manuscript. The editorial decision (revise/reject/accept) is available to the reviewers in the submission system.
Revision
If invited to revise, authors are required to return a detailed, point-by-point response to the reviewers' and editor’s comments together with the revised manuscript. The invitation to submit a revised manuscript does not imply that the manuscript will necessarily be accepted for publication.
Acceptance and publication
The revised manuscript and the point-by-point response are then evaluated in detail by the editor who evaluated the manuscript after the review process, who may discuss critical points with the editor-in-chief. This may result in a decision to consult the original reviewers once more to judge whether their concerns have been addressed satisfactorily. If the revisions and responses are deemed satisfactory, the manuscript will be accepted and queued for editing.
In preparation for publication, the editors rigorously edit all articles for content and style, and the authors may need to provide further information, corrections and clarifications at this stage. For rapid communications, because points can arise during the editing process that may have gone unnoticed during evaluation, we do not formally accept these articles before the editing is complete.
Authors can expect three editing rounds with the editors. This includes a clearance round with the editor-in-chief, who reviews and approves the article ahead of publication. Once the responsible editor and corresponding author have agreed on the final version of the manuscript, a final copy is sent to the corresponding author for approval. For regular articles, all co-authors must approve the final version. For rapid communications, the corresponding author is the guarantor and responsible for ensuring involvement of co-authors on critical passages and the final approval on behalf of all authors.
After approval, the article is published in one of the next available issues, usually within 2 weeks from finalisation of the text. This timeframe may be longer if the article is published as part of a thematic issue or in the context of a particular event.
Rapid communications follow the same steps but are processed with priority to ensure timely dissemination of important public health information.