Ideally, the number of referees chosen depends on how controversial the paper appears to be, and on the habits of the journal. Sometimes two are chosen, and a third is only appointed if there is a stalemate. In general, referees are firstly chosen for their knowledge of the area of the paper, and secondly their experience in refereeing, researching, writing, editing and supervising. The ideal candidates for refereeing may be too busy. {Unpaid work falls to the bottom of the to-do list!} The candidate referees are chose by the editor from his or her network of colleagues and from internet searches.

Well, I do agree with both of you (Kennedy & Vintila) but what happened if one referee has completely rejected the manuscript with major comments and the other has accepted with minor comments. Has the editor any role in accepting and rejecting the manuscrpt (it is not his area of research) or has toreturned the revised manuscript to the referees for final acceptance?.

The editor will try to find the midway. In difficult cases, the editor may simply forward all comments to the author, and ask the author to revise the paper accordingly. If one of the referees is more conversant with the field of the paper, the editor will weight that review more heavily. The author may still disagree with the referees (through the editor), and not 'fix' everything, but must point out what has been rejected , and what has been revised. It does happen that a referee may misinterpret parts of a paper. The editor has final say. The referees are expected to provide sufficient detail in their original comments for the paper to be rescued without recourse to further refereeing.

Thanks all, but what is the difference in job description between the editorial board and advisory board regarding accepting and rejecting manuscript before and after passing to referees.

This has always been a mystery to me. As a rule, I have been asked to review only those manuscripts specific to my area(s) of expertise. This is easily determined by editorial boards who review a list of those publications to which my name is attached. I tend to agree that my habit of completing the review within a few days of receiving the invitation serves to encourage an editor to call upon my services with some regularity. In the last year I have routinely been one "referee" on a 2-3 reviewer panel selected to offer an opinion for each candidate manuscript. I see the task of reviewing a manuscript as an opportunity for personal intellectual growth.

I do agree with Giblin is that an editor (or the board), review that references of the manuscript and choose the referee among the reference section. This is can be fair but the problem is can the referee completing the review within time and free without paying.

The editor must be a master at following up. Even the speediest of referees have personal emergencies and selective amnesia!

Let me describe very breifly the policy we use at the journal eXPRESS Polymer Letters, in which I am involved. First, there is a very brief evaluation of the incoming paper by 3 of the editorial board members. This decides whether the article is intoroduced to the reviewing process at all (we do not accept more than 50% of the incoming articles, we try to pick up only those which may prove to be "interesting" for the audience. This isa necessity because of the impact factor. Becasue of this sometimes we have to reject even papers which are good by themselves but not "actual"). If the paper is submitted to the reviewing process we ask sometimes as many as 20 potential referees, usually, 6-8 is enough to get at least 3-4 answers. If we get enough answers we stop the work of the rest of the potential referees. If it tirns our thet there are at lest two Reject or Reject and Resubmit opinions, we usually stop the reviewing porcess immediately. (Of course, the reason for rejecting is always taken into account). If we have 3-4 opinions with reasonable comments, the editorial borad can usually decide which opinions are are accepted. It may hapepn that we have 3 Minor and 1 reject opinion. In such cases we accept the papre provisionally and show the answer to the "rejecting" referee again before the final decision. The Chief editor(s) may decid, hwoever, that the reject opinion is accepted and the paper gets rejected in spite of the "minor" comments. Some degree of subjectivity always remains, but one or two opinions may be misleading. In our journal the final rejection rate is between 65 and 70% - which is necessary to maintain a high impact factor - even though it sometimes hurts the authors.

As referee for a few journals and some more conferences I can report of similar experiences like John Giblin wrote about. The Editor in-chief are in Charge and sometimes have touble in finding sufficient number of Referees available for a given article at a given time. If you don't get an answer they ask to recommend somebody else after some time. A more detailed insight I have from our "in-house" conferences and journals, for which we always try to establish an international and adequate review process with 3 or 4 referees. For conflict situations I can confirm the procedure as described Ian Kennedy and Gyorgy Banhegyi, that rejections by a single referee will be reviewed again providing some or all Information from the other referees. However some Editors in chief just decide by themself on Basis of the opinions provided. Not all reviewing processes are following a clear or well establish Standard, if there is anything like that at all.

Back to the original question of how editors/boards or whoever is responsible actually find appropriate reviewers for a given paper. From my experience as a reviewer for conferences and journals I can tell that I usually have to fill out a form with boxes to tick for my professional areas, e.g. metadata. I assume that the staff receiving papers for review applies a database of reviewers and their experiences and helps find suitable colleagues. And, yes, as @Ruediger said, there does not seem to be an established standard of the reviewing process as a whole. We obviously have best practices for reviewing a paper, though:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_review_a_scientific_manuscript

My experience is that reviewers are found either by personal knowledge or looking at the papers cited. In the latter case, nowadays that is easy, looking in the ISI-web-of-knowledge or in Scopus. I know I am frequently selected that way.

So far, it seems that there is no standard procedure to follow in selection referees in quality and quantity as well as there is no standard reviewing forms to help referee in evaluation of the manuscript. Of course that means manuscript can be completely rejected in one journal and accepted as it is in amother journal with different evaluation system.

You are right, and the argument is, that it fits (if accepted), or it fits not (if rejected), the editorial line. It has nothing to do with quality. I work in compositional data analysis, and many times I have seen rejections with the argument: it is not in the interest of the readers. It is very difficult to introduce a new approach, that is not main stream, but it is possible. It requires patience!

The impact factor system and the (not too much) hidden economic interests behind it force the journals to accept paprers that are expected to be "popular" - i.e. which produce citations. The citation based evaluation of journals and researchers produces several distortions, it can and should be debated but right now there is no other accepted standard and all other systmes would also be distorted by the players. It should be realized that science is not a "pure" discipline, it is run by vain, self-centered and selfish people (I do not think that the average moraility of scientists is any better than that of the rest). As science is a part of society, influenced by economic, private etc. interests, so no purely objective evaluation system would work (if there is any). So either one works according to his/her own morality, accepts rejection, can wait for approval form the future, or he/she himself/herself will become part of the "big play" by fighting for or buying buying a fake fame.

This is good question.

I am convinced that there is no specific rule for selection of a reviewer. Some time your paper gets rejected just because the reviewer is irrelevant.

so this should be addressed and this is main problem. Relative experience is very essential.

Henk Smid, I agree with you. But some times, it is complicated instead of right or wrong. Examples: (1) an article was submitted to a very good impact factor journal, editor sent us (authors) the article for review:) Our reply might be embarrasing for him so article was refused (within a week) with review report by 5 reviewers ( normally it is done by 3 for this journal). (2) Another article in antoher good IF journal was refused (after 2 months). The review report was never existed/provided. Editor replied, when we insisted, that reviewers refused article as figures were inside text ' a lame excuse' :) These journals are well known in my field.

Its really a complex matter, but I think area of specialization/interest and Published details plays a vital role here.

Dear Henk Smid

Want to say some thing in reply.

You can't be expert in every field and also can't analyze every topic in science or specific application. Science is very wide.

So most relevant person is .......!!! who have already published or have some experience in that field. I just want to say this.

When your paper is sent to that reviewer who is not expert in that field what he will do?. So, i think (irrelevant) word is not that wrong.

Cheers!

Thanks, all, but it seems again, it is not clear how to choose a referee and to also accept the manuscript. Does the journal has any policy in acceptance or rejection the manuscript rather than the referees.

The editors usually select the evaluators according to the subject of the manuscript to be reviewed. Preferably evaluators should have experience in the same subject. Sometimes evaluators are selected from the list of authors cited in the manuscript. Ideally, the evaluators should have a lot of experience so that the evaluation process would be rigorous and the article published might have a good impact.

However, the large number of manuscripts that currently receives a high-impact journal cause evaluators are overwhelmed with requests and editors have to invite evaluators working in the field but less experienced.

This growing demand for publishing has led to the need that some editors will ask you suggest 2-3 potential reviewers and indicate if you want not to send the manuscript to anyone in particular.

It has also led to growing industry called Predatory journals that do not perform rigorous evaluation, or even do not realize it, just charge the service to publish the material.

From my personal experience, in the large majority of cases I was selected as a reviewer in journals where I previsously published (or in similar journals by the same publisher, e.g. Taylor & Francis, Elsevier, Emerald, IEEE Transactions...).

Apparently, editors tend to assume that a researcher's ability to have his/her study published in their journal somehow testifies his/her knowledge and expertise on the overall subject matter covered by the journal itself.

Reviewers are scarce resources for journal nowadays, so editors try to work with the contacts they have (namely, those whose studies have been published by their journals).

That might be true in some cases, but I receive papers for review from journals I never published in and probably will never publish in, as they belong to applied fields where I'm not related with. In my case, I receive them for my expertise in compositional data analysis, and they find me either because my work is cited, or simply doing a search in some base, like ISI-web-of-knowledge or Scopus.

Dear Henk,

My question would be: is there any open system, like e.g. the one we are right now using in Researchgate, where people could review interactively a paper and vote it up or down? Maybe some previous process "by invitation" would be necessary, but only as a first step.

Best regards,

Vera

Predatory Journals have been described as:

Typically, these publishers spam professional email lists, broadly soliciting article submissions for the clear purpose of gaining additional income. Operating essentially as vanity presses, these publishers typically have a low article acceptance threshold, with a false-front or non-existent peer review process. Unlike professional publishing operations, whether subscription-based or ethically-sound open access, these predatory publishers add little value to scholarship, pay little attention to digital preservation, and operate using fly-by-night, unsustainable business models.

In Mexico, the president of the Mexican Academy of Sciences has issued an e-mail alert against this type of journals and their fraudulent activities, recommending Academy members read the following pages:

www.nature.com/news/investigating-journals-the-dark-side-of-publishing-1.12666

www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&

The list of questionable, scholarly open-access journals (also called Jeffrey Beall’s List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers) as well as the criteria for determining predatory journals can be read in the next address:

http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/

Dear Henk,

Sorry, I should not have used the term "open". I did not mean it to be a democracy, and I am very aware of the importance of peer review by experts. But, at the same time, I have experienced the difficulties in introducing something that is not standard or main-stream. Peer review can be very biased. And the idea would be look for a system that allows new ideas to show up.

Afectuosos saludos,

Vera

I do agree with all that there is no system in selection of referees (no guidelines). However, some are saying that the keywords of the manuscript play a role, others are saying references cited in the manuscript (either primary or important references). So, we are looking for some basis for the referees and review system to be at least standard and known for all.

It all depends on the interests and the research inclinations of the journal. Not everything is bad. We just need to unlock the mysteries on how to publish in a specific journal. Indeed for this there is no exact answer. I just think that we all need to be good research discoverers of journals and I always remember what my mother told me once: "if you fail seven times, you try eight" journals.

If editors take the lazy route, and only ask the first two of author's references to be be referees, it will result in research that is only mildly evolutionary and not revolutionary.

Thanks a lot, Sebastian! This is a great suggestion.

Best regards,

Vera

Simply he is maybe chosen from the recent references, avoid those having direct relation, like co-authors, same country, ....