Peer Review Declaration

All papers published in this volume of IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing. • Type of peer review: Single-blind • Conference submission management system: submissions were received and handled via Conference e-mail: [email protected] • Number of submissions received: 120 • Number of submissions sent for review: 120 • Number of submissions accepted: 63 • Acceptance Rate (Number of Submissions Accepted / Number of Submissions Received × 100): 53 % • Average number of reviews per paper: 2 • Total number of reviewers involved: 18 • Any additional info on the review process: Each paper took 2 weeks for revisions after review; 2 rounds of the review process were applied. Review criteria for manuscripts When reviewing articles, 20 criteria were used. 1 criterion “COMPLIANCE WITH COLLECTION PROFILE”. According to this criterion, it fully corresponded to the profile of the collection of 51 articles, partially corresponded to the profile of the collection – 11, did not correspond to – 57. Thus, according to the first criterion, 57 articles were rejected, 11 were sent for revision, returned from revision and accepted after repeated review 11. Total in the final version of the collection adopted 63 articles. 2 criterion “RECOMMENDED HEADING FOR PUBLICATION”. According to this criterion, the recommended headings were refined in 5 articles, which were accepted after rereview. 3 criterion “PRESENCE OF PLAGIUM” (including auto-plagiarism). There were no rejected articles for this criterion. 4 criterion “CONTENTS”. Rejected for reason - article contains no new information – 17 articles. 5 criterion “TITLE”. According to this criterion, the authors of 3 articles were asked to change the title of the articles. After re-reviewing, these articles were accepted for publication. 6 criterion “ANNOTATION”. Changes have been made to 9 articles. The changes concerned the reduction of the annotation, as its dimensions did not meet the requirements. 7 criterion “INTRODUCTION”. On the recommendation of the editors, changes were made to 7 articles. 8 criterion “METHODS”. According to this criterion, 5 articles were sent for revision. The main reason for the revision was the lack of links to similar foreign articles. 9 criterion “EXPERIMENTAL DATA”. There were no rejected articles for this criterion. 10 criterion “STATISTICAL DATA PROCESSING”. There were no rejected articles for this criterion. 11 criterion “ILLUSTRATIONS AND SIGNATURES”. According to this criterion, it was recommended that 36 authors improve their articles. Basically, all recommendations are technical in nature. Of these, 31 articles were returned for re-review and recommended for publication. 12 criterion “TABLES AND THEIR HEADINGS”. Editors’ comments were of a technical nature. According to the publication requirements, 29 articles were sent for revision. All of them were adopted after the changes made by the authors. 13 criterion “DISCUSSION AND INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS”. 6 articles were rejected, which were insufficiently substantiated and contained only a listing of the facts obtained. 14 criterion “STYLE OF PRESENTATION”. There were no rejected articles for this criterion. 15 criterion “REFERENCES”. According to this criterion, technical corrections were made in 41 articles, which were accepted after revision by the authors. 16 criterion “LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS”. There were no rejected articles for this criterion. 17 criterion “QUALITY SUMMARY”. There were no rejected articles for this criterion. 18 criterion “THE QUALITY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE OF THE WHOLE TEXT OF THE ARTICLE”. According to this criterion, 5 articles were rejected as the presentation in English was unsatisfactory. The article could not be accepted for publication. 24 articles contained grammatical and stylistic errors in the English version. The authors of these articles were encouraged to correct the corresponding inaccuracies. After the changes were made, 24 articles were accepted for publication. 19 and 20 criteria “CONCLUSION” and “OVERALL PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT”. According to this criterion, 63 articles were recommended for publication by the editors. Of these, 41 articles were required to be revised. The editors rejected 57 articles. Contact person for queries: Name: Oleg V. Korsun, Ph. D. (Biol.) Affiliation: Institute of Natural Resources, Ecology and Cryology SB RAS Email: [email protected]