Review Process

Accept after Minor Revisions:

The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.

Reconsider after Major Revisions:

The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point by point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. Usually, a maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is normally provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within a suitable time frame, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. If the required revision time is estimated to be longer than 2 months, we will recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting so as to avoid unnecessary time pressure and to ensure that all manuscripts are sufficiently revised.

Reject and Encourage Resubmission:

If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further experiments have been conducted.

Reject:

The article has serious flaws, and/or makes no original significant contribution. No offer of resubmission is provided.