For Reviewers

TSR journal highly values the time and efforts invested by the peer-reviewers. With your help, we make sure that the quality of the published works meet the highest standards set for scientific research.

Please, consider the following while reviewing for the TSR journal.

Before accepting the commitment:

• If this is your first review, make sure that you are familiar with the open peer-review procedure accepted by the TSR journal. In a nutshell, the reviewers' names are disclosed when a paper is accepted and published.

• Does the article match your area of expertise? Accept only if you are familiar well enough with the subject of the paper.

• Do you have a competing interest? Inform the editor when you respond.

• Do you have time? For an editor, it is better to receive a straight ‘no’ and search for another candidate rather than to chase a review that never comes.

 Reviewing

• Confidentiality. Please, treat the manuscript as a confidential document. This means you can’t share it with anyone without authorization from the editor. You must not share information about the review itself either.

• Direct contacts with authors. There should be none, simple as that, during the entire review process.

• Authorship of manuscript. Your comments and decision on the manuscript should not be affected by the knowledge of the authorship or the origin of the manuscript.

• Review structure.

  • Step 1. Start with a general overview of whether the paper addresses a relevant research question and makes a valuable contribution to the current bulk of knowledge on traffic safety.
  • Step 2. Add some major comments with regards to the choice and application of the method, data and data analysis quality, soundness of the discussion and conclusions.
  • Step 3. Add minor comments related to the language use, errors in the text, graphs and tables, etc.
  • Step 4. Take a decision on whether the paper should be Accepted, Revised or Rejected. Remember that you can provide additional comments explaining your decision that are visible only to the editor.

• Problem formulation. Is it clear what is the problem the authors attempting to address? Is it a relevant problem? Have the authors properly reviewed what has already beeen done on the problem by others?

• Methodology. Do authors use a sound and appropriate methodology (the latest 'hottest' method is not necessarily the best for the problem at hands)? Is the methodology properly described to a degree that it can be replicated?

• Research data and visualisations. Has the data been collected in an appropriate way (with regards to ethics, technical limitations, and potential bias sources)? Is the data collection procedure described sufficiently so that it can be replicated? Are the data and analysis results visualised in a readable and comprehensive way, without unnecessary details and repetitions?

• Results, discussion and conclusions. Are the reported findings supported by the data? Is the discussion sufficiently elaborated and does it put the findings in the context of already existing knowledge, relate to earlier studies, outline the limitations and uncertainty sources of the current work? Are the conclusions concise and solely based on the findings, avoiding general and trivial statements?

After the review

• Final decision. The final decision on the paper is made by the editor based on the reviewers’ recommendations. In case the reviews are contradicting, the editor will ask for an opinion of an additional reviewer.

• Revisions. If the authors are recommended to revise their manuscript, you may be asked to check whether you comments have been addressed appropriately and the paper can now be accepted for the publication.

• Open peer-review. To acknowledge the efforts being made, TSR journal makes public the names of both the editor and the reviewers of the accepted papers. If a paper is published against the recommendation of a reviewer, his/her name is not disclosed. Neither are revealed the names of the reviewers of the papers that have been rejected.