Peer review decleration

The 3rd Southeast Asian Conference on Geophysics (SEACG) 2020 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: Conference web submission system • Number of submission Received: 151 manuscripts received • Number of submission sent for review: 110 manuscripts sent for review • Number of submission accepted: 102 manuscript accepted by editor • Acceptance Rate (Number of Submissions Accepted / Number of Submissions Received X 100): (102/151) x 100 = 67.5 % • Average number of reviews per paper: Average 2 reviewers of each paper • Total number of reviewers involved: 45 reviewers • Any additional info on review process: – We did plagiarism check for each paper using licenced Turnitin online software. And we accepted the level of plagiarism each manuscript below 20 %. – The review process was conducted using google form that integrated with conference secretariat email. We sent a review invitation to reviewer by official email of SEACG 2020 and the reviewers conducted review process based on 4 sections: • Technical Criteria • Scientific merit of the manuscript: notably scientific rigour, accuracy and correctness. • Clarity of expression; communication of ideas; readability and discussion of concepts. • Sufficient discussion of the context of the work, and suitable referencing. • Quality Criteria • Originality: Is the work relevant and novel? • Motivation: Does the problem considered have a sound motivation? All papers should clearly demonstrate the scientific interest of the results. • Repetition: Have significant parts of the manuscript already been published? • Length: Is the content of the work of sufficient scientific interest to justify its length? • Presentation Criteria • Title: Is it adequate and appropriate for the content of the article? • Abstract: Does it contain the essential information of the article? Is it complete? Is it suitable for inclusion by itself in an abstracting service? • Diagrams, figures, tables and captions: Are they essential and clear? • Text and mathematics: Are they brief but still clear? If you recommend shortening, please suggest what should be omitted. • Conclusion: Does the paper contain a carefully written conclusion, summarizing what has been learned and why it is interesting and useful? • Decision • Reviewer comment • Suggestion ∘ Ready to publish ∘ Minor correction ∘ Major correction ∘ Reject – All the comments by reviewers were sent to the author to make the correction and revision within 20 days. The editor will check each revised manuscript carefully and make sure the authors have addressed the questions and comments from reviewer. If the manuscript need to do revision for 2nd circle, the editor would send it back to the authors. • Contact person for queries: Dr. Zulfakriza Geophysical Engineering Dept. Faculty of Mining and Petroleum Engineering Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia [email protected]

Re-evaluation of solutions to the problem of unprofessionalism in peer review

Our recent paper (10.1186/s41073-020-00096-x) reported that 43% of reviewer comment sets (n=1491) shared with authors contained at least one unprofessional comment or an incomplete, inaccurate of unsubstantiated critique (IIUC). Publication of this work sparked an online (i.e., Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit) conversation surrounding professionalism in peer review. We collected and analyzed these social media comments as they offered real-time responses to our work and provided insight into the views held by commenters and potential peer-reviewers that would be difficult to quantify using existing empirical tools (96 comments from July 24th to September 3rd, 2020). Overall, 75% of comments were positive, of which 59% were supportive and 16% shared similar personal experiences. However, a subset of negative comments emerged (22% of comments were negative and 6% were an unsubstantiated critique of the methodology), that provided potential insight into the reasons underlying unprofessional comments were made during the peer-review process. These comments were classified into three main themes: (1) forced niceness will adversely impact the peer-review process and allow for publication of poor-quality science (5% of online comments); (2) dismissing comments as not offensive to another person because they were not deemed personally offensive to the reader (6%); and (3) authors brought unprofessional comments upon themselves as they submitted substandard work (5%). Here, we argue against these themes as justifications for directing unprofessional comments towards authors during the peer review process. We argue that it is possible to be both critical and professional, and that no author deserves to be the recipient of demeaning ad hominem attacks regardless of supposed provocation. Suggesting otherwise only serves to propagate a toxic culture within peer review. While we previously postulated that establishing a peer-reviewer code of conduct could help improve the peer-review system, we now posit that priority should be given to repairing the negative cultural zeitgeist that exists in peer-review.