COPE membership
Traffic Safety Research is accepted as a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics).
The Traffic Safety Research (TSR) journal highly values time and efforts invested by the peer reviewers. With your help, we make sure that the quality of our publications meets the highest standards set for scientific research.
Below, you can learn more about:
We highly recommend reading the instructions below, but also—especially for young career researchers—spend some time on general education in how to make good peer reviews. Some resources to start with are:
Please, consider the following:
The inspiration for these guidelines came to a high degree from the ‘Ethical guidelines for peer revieweing’ provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Remember that the editor requires a fair, honest, and unbiased assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript. Even though you can provide comments visible to the editor only, most of the feedback should be put in the text that the authors will see. Confidential comments should not be a place for denigration or false accusation, done in the knowledge that the authors will not see them.
As a reviewer, you should inform the editor about competing interests that might influence your judgement. Competing interests may be personal, financial, intellectual, professional or political in nature. If you are (or have been recently) employed at the same institution as any of the authors, involved in mentorship relations, close collaborations or joint grant holding, you should not agree to review.
Competing interest does not mean that objectivity of your review is affected, but rather that it can be perceived as affected. As a rule of thumb, you should disclose any relations that, if discovered at a later stage, may cause you embarrassment.
You should not agree to review a manuscript just to gain sight of it with no intention of submitting a review, or agree to review a manuscript that is very similar to one you have in preparation or under consideration at another journal.
A reviewer should 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.
The following applies:
There should be none, simple as that, during the entire review process. The communication with authors is handled by the journal.
Your comments and decision on the manuscript should not be affected by the knowledge of the authorship or the origin of the manuscript.
In case you suspect that some misconduct took place, either in the research itself or during the manuscript writing and submission, inform the editor immediately. It is appropriate to cooperate, in confidence, in the journal investigation, but do not personally take further actions unless we ask you for additional information or advice.
Read more about how allegations of misconduct are treated by the TSR journal here.
The review consists of several predefined questions and a free text part. The predefined questions reflect the aspects that the editoreal team considers important in deciding whether a paper should be published or not.
The free text part should include the following components:
Consider specifically the following aspects of the work under review:
An example of the TSR review form can be downloaded here.
Reviewers may register their contributions at the ReviewerCredits, a platform to certify, measure and reward peer review activities. Read more about the benefits of the registration and the practical steps involved here.
The open peer review format applied by the TSR ensures that reviewers are named in the published papers.
Once you have completed your review, the following happens:
Traffic Safety Research is accepted as a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics).
TSR calls for submission to a special volume on ‘Traffic safety in low- and middle-income countries’.
ISSN 2004-3082 (online) www.tsr.international |