Guidelines for Editorial Board Members (EBMs)

Introduction

Bioscience Education welcomes articles on a range of subjects within the context of teaching and learning in the Biosciences. These articles may treat their subjects generally or in detail; they may include practical, scientific, theoretical, or historical topics and how these might be dealt with in a teaching situation. They must have both scientific and pedagogical validity and must conform to the Instructions to Authors

We appreciate that reviewing papers takes up your time and we are very grateful to you for agreeing to co-ordinate reviews for our journal.

Role of the EBM

As an EBM for an article you will be expected to co-ordinate part of the review process for that particular article. The Editor-in-Chief will e-mail you the article, an EBM summary form and a reviewers form. You will be asked to identify at least 2 reviewers for the paper (one of whom may be yourself), distribute a copy of the article, a reviewers form and instructions to each reviewer.

Once the reviews are complete you will be expected to collate the general comments on the EBM summary form and to combine the suggested ammendments made to the electronic manuscript. You will be asked to make a recommendation on the suitability of the article on the basis of these reviews and e-mail the completed EBM summary form and ammended script back to the Editor-in-Chief.

Further details on the different elements of the procedure are available below

1. Comments
Please type your overall comments on the EBM summary form and e-mail them as an attachment to the Editor-in-Chief.

For more specific and detailed comments you may use the Track Changes option to add these to the electronic version of the manuscript provided; this will be returned to the author for their consideration and amendment where appropriate. Please ensure that if requested these comments and suggested amendments are confidential by changing the security settings to remove personal details.

2. Recommendation
Indicate on the comment sheet your recommendation:

• Accept the manuscript as it stands.

• Accept with Minor Revisions: The paper is almost ready for publication, requiring only minor revisions that could be reasonably accomplished within one month.

• Accept with Major Revisions: More extensive revisions are required (such as rethinking interpretations of the data, finding and incorporating missed references into the narrative, rethinking the structure and presentation of data tables, adding illustrations, etc.).

• Reject but may Resubmit: The topic and basic approach of the treatment or experiments are appropriate to Bioscience Education, but some of the work needs to be redone, or additional material/observations/analysis need to be incorporated. Note that "Reject may resubmit" does NOT mean that the paper is unsuitable for Bioscience Education, nor is it a negative response. If you choose this option, emphasize in your comments that the author is encouraged to resubmit the article.

• Reject: The paper is unsuitable for Bioscience Education (and resubmission is not encouraged). If you have ideas for a more appropriate journal, please feel free to mention them for the author's benefit.

3. Confidentiality
Please remember that this is a confidential process. If during the review process you ask advice or an opinion from a colleague, the authors should always remain anonymous and the discussions confidential.

4. Return of the reviews and recommendation
Please e-mail your overall evaluation and recommendation to the Editor-by-Chief by the date requested, and always as soon as possible. If you find that you are unable to meet the deadline, inform the Centre for Bioscience office immediately. Our timetable is tight because we intend to provide a prompt, rolling publication service with a turnaround time for accepted submissions of approximately one month.

Please remember that a copy of most of your review (except your confidential comments to the Editor) goes to the author to provide guidance and support and the justification for your decision. Your comments are intended to be constructive, and both positive as well as negative comments can be important and appropriate. These should help the authors to realise that particular suggestions are not merely criticisms, but are intended to improve the quality of the article so that the end result is an improved professional publication. Insulting or mean-spirited comments cannot be passed on to authors. Framing comments in as constructive and professional a manner as possible will improve the author's ability to accept them and increase our chances of receiving a publishable revision.

Track changes feature: supporting notes and websites

Track changes is a way of recording changes made by different authors and also gives the opportunity to add pertient comments anywhere in the text. The following web sites provide useful support for the Track Changes feature that we expect Reviewers to use. There is also extensive online help within Microsoft Word itself.

• Microsoft Office 'how-to' guide

• Word Tracking Changes Guide: Drew University — a very clear exposition of its use for older versions of MS-Word

Note that the identity of the reviewers comments can be removed automatically.

Word 2007 — Change the author name for review comments

Word 2003 — See demonstration

Copyright

Copyright for Bioscience Education articles remains with the authors. Authors must ensure, however, that they have copyright, or have the appropriate copyright releases, for any 3rd party materials (e.g. images) that they use in their manuscript.

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