IOP Publishing’s conference series journals provide conference organizers with a cost-effective means of publishing proceedings on an open access basis. Readers can access the content of the journals immediately without payment of a subscription fee or licence. Authors pay no article publication charge and all the costs of publishing the journal are met by the conference organizers.
For more information about the conference series, please visit the Publishing Support homepage (and click on “Conference Organisers”).
During the preparation of a typescript, you may be contacted by the ebook editor to review a draft of the typescript or selected chapters. Your review will serve as a testimonial and add value to the ebook in assisting the author refine the coverage to best suit the need of readers.
As an expert on this selected material, the editors are seeking your overall impression of the content and appreciate any feedback on how to improve the work.
With the audience in mind, this review should focus on quality, scope, and presentation of the ebook material. IOP Publishing will work alongside the author or editor of the ebook in incorporate your suggestions. Please note this is strictly a content review and you will not be asked to edit for grammar, punctuation, or spelling as each manuscript has a full copy edit and proof read upon submission of the final files.
A tailored reader’s feedback form is provided, which asks for feedback on specific elements of the work. Key focus points while reviewing sample manuscript content are:
1
What is your take on presentation, value, and approachability for the intended audience?
2
Is the structure of the content appropriate?
3
Are all necessary topics included?
4
Are there weaknesses in the proposed content? If so, how can we improve upon this work before we publish the ebook?
Timeframe
It is important to adhere to the review submission date which your Editor will discuss with you upon invitation. Timely return of reviews of manuscripts will help to keep the manuscript on schedule and ensure we meet the set publication date promised to our audience.
If for some reason you are not able to complete the review, alternative names for potential reviewers are most helpful.
The reviewing stage of any proposal is key to ascertaining the quality, worth and potential of the ebook being proposed. As a specialist in the topic of an ebook proposal under consideration you may be approached by the ebook’s editor to provide feedback and your opinion on quality, relevance and scope of the book and how it fits in the wider ebook landscape. Your feedback is used not only to assess the quality of proposal, but to provide constructive feedback to allow IOP to work with the author to develop and maximize the potential of every title
An ebook proposal review form tailored to IOP Publishing standards will be sent to reviewers to identify strengths and weaknesses of the proposal, proper book structure, and a series of questions to determine if the ebook proposal plan demonstrates to be a viable investment of IOP. Among the series of questions in the proposal review form, the most important are:
1
Has the author properly assessed a need for this ebook and addressed it with quality, clarity, and organization of the material presented?
2
What is the technical level of this ebook?
3
Is the author's coverage of the topic adequate?
4
What are strengths of the proposed ebook? What are weaknesses of this proposed ebook and how can we improve and strengthen this work?
5
Is the author qualified to write this ebook? Are you familiar with the author's work?
6
Is the author aware of any competing books?
7
What is your general overview of the proposal and do you support publication?
It is important to note that IOP Publishing is an international ebook publisher adhering to a global audience. We seek reviews from all regions of the world to ensure the ebook will appeal to our worldwide readership. This includes possible reviews from North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific.
Timeframe
It is important to adhere to the review submission date which your Editor will discuss with you upon invitation. Timely return of reviews assists the author and IOP in developing and assessing the project.
If for some reason you are not able to complete the review, alternative names for potential reviewers are most helpful.
Any questions should be addressed to permissions@ioppublishing.org.
An initial response to a query will usually be provided within two working days.
Your report, along with those of any other reviewers, will be read by the journal editors who will make a decision on how to proceed. If the reviewer reports agree, the decision will be made to either:
- Accept the manuscript without any further changes
- Reject the paper
- Ask the authors to revise the paper further.
If the reviewer reports do not agree, the journal may consult an adjudicator. An adjudicator is a senior reviewer or Editorial Board member. They are asked to provide an opinion on both the article and reviewer reports. If an Editorial Board member is used, they may be told the names of the reviewers securely and in-line with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), to help them make their decisions. However, the authors will still only see anonymous reports. The adjudicator may agree or disagree with your assessment of the article.
All reviewers of a paper are informed when the editor makes their decision, and you will also be able to see the anonymous reports of any other reviewers at this stage. If the author is asked to make further revisions, you may be asked to review the revisions when they come in (see ‘Reviewing a revised article’).
For information on the benefits of reviewing for IOP Publishing journals, including our 10% reviewer APC discount programme, click here.
Our dedicated team of expert marketers help you manage the promotion of your book throughout the publication process and beyond. The marketing team work closely with the commissioning team and the information provided by the authors in their Marketing Questionnaire in defining the promotional activities for each title.
An overview of our marketing and how authors can assist in the promotion of their book can be found in our Marketing Guide For Authors.
Getting the best exposure for your book
Our marketing approach can be broken down into three main areas:
1
Author and title awareness and attraction
2
Library and reader awareness in support of sales
3
Marketing support materials
Author and title awareness and attraction
Raising the profile of our authors is key if we are to help make any book a success. Author awareness campaigns help raise the demand for a book. Key activities for author promotion may include:
1
Conference promotion—highlighting relevant books at key events
2
E-mail and online marketing campaigns—timely and relevant campaigns to showcase a book
3
Inclusion in Expanding Physics promotions—this could be targeted list purchase, promotion to suitable partnership organizations and being part of our sales catalogue
4
Author webinars – a great way to tell the story behind a book, author webinars provide a novel way to help raise an author's profile
Library and reader awareness in support of sales
Our library campaigns are directly focused on generating visibility, demand, sales and usage at global institutions and our books will benefit from activities such as:
1
Inclusion in print and digital literature, including forthcoming titles lists, general brochures, flyers, etc
2
E-mail marketing campaigns to raise general awareness, field-specific promotions and new title announcements
3
Communications to current and target library customers
4
Industry conference presence and launch announcements
Marketing support materials
Marketing materials specific to each book are created, including web banners, print adverts, business cards and flyers. Authors can download flyers for their book from their own books homepage on our website iopscience.org/books. Marketing materials are also sent to targeted conferences and exhibitions to promote relevant books.
Hosting
Our books are hosted on iopscience.org. This is our innovative content platform, which attracts an audience of more than 1.5 million visitors a month from more than 4700 worldwide institutions and corporations. All books are fully integrated with other content on iopscience.org. This means users will find it when they are searching by keywords, subject area or simply browsing book collections.
Homepage
All books also benefit from their own homepage, which we link directly to in our specific marketing campaigns.
You will be invited to update the original quality assessment scores you provided with your original review. If you feel the paper has been improved, your scores should increase.
When reviewing a revised manuscript, you are checking that the revisions are satisfactory. You will receive a copy of the revised manuscript as well as the author’s response to the reviewers’ reports.
It is generally not appropriate to request additional changes (not mentioned in your original report) at this stage.
If the authors fail to answer your criticisms, please check the ‘Unsatisfactory Revision’ box on the report form and describe the areas that were not addressed in the revision in your comments.
For articles published under the gold open access model, in the case of IOP owned journals, the authors retain the copyright in the article and grant IOP a non-exclusive licence to publish the article. The position with other journals may vary and is set out in the applicable copyright form.
If an article has been published under the gold open access model, it should have a box with OPEN ACCESS on it at the top of the first page of the article and the licence type (CC BY for newer content, CC BY-NC-SA for older content, and CC BY-NC-ND for some articles in ECS owned journals) at the bottom of the first page of the article.
Articles published under the gold open access model are currently published under a CC BY licence, unless the article is published by an ECS journal. For ECS journals, authors have the ability to choose to publish under either a CC BY licence or a CC BY-NC-ND licence.
Articles published under the gold open access model prior to December 2012 were published under the CC BY-NC-SA licence (you should look at the first page of the article around this time to check which licence the article was published under).
For information on how to request permission, see the permissions section.
This is normally a quicker process than reviewing an original manuscript. The deadline for your comments will be between five and 21 days, depending on the journal. Again, if you need an extension please get in touch with the editorial office.
