Electrocatalysis - Important Update to Our Submission Guidelines

Please be aware, that we have now added a detailed peer review description to our submission guidelines:

Additional Information for Peer Review Process

This journal is guided by the Springer Portfolio editorial Peer Review Policy (this opens in a new tab).

The following types of contribution to this journal are peer-reviewed:

Research, Correspondence, Review, and Perspective.

Correspondence contributions are comments on already published papers made by readers and responses written by the respective authors. The decision to publish correspondence is made by the Editor-in-Chief or a Topical Editor, and if required correspondence may undergo a review process.

All forms of published correction may also be peer-reviewed at the discretion of the Editors. Editorials, Book Reviews and other contributed articles are not usually peer-reviewed. Nevertheless, articles published in these sections, particularly if they present technical information, may be peer-reviewed at the discretion of the Editors.

The corresponding author is notified by e-mail when the Editor decides to send a paper for review. Manuscripts judged to be of potential interest to our readership are sent for formal review, typically to two or three reviewers. Reviewer selection is critical to the publication process, and we base our choice on many factors, including expertise, reputation, specific recommendations and our own previous experience with a reviewer and their contributions to the journal. When selecting reviewers, we seek to avoid conflicts of interest and close associates of the authors. Springer Nature is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion; Springer journals strive for diverse demographic representation of peer reviewers.

This journal operates a single-anonymized peer review process (this opens in a new tab). In line with policy, reviewers are not identified to the authors, except at the request of the reviewer.

This journal requires potential reviewers to disclose any professional and commercial competing interests before undertaking to review a paper, and requires reviewers not to copy papers or to circulate them to un-named colleagues. All reviewers agree to these conditions before the journal sends them a manuscript for assessment by external reviewers. Although our Editors make every effort to ensure manuscripts are assessed fairly, the journal is not responsible for the conduct of its reviewers.

All submissions are prescreened by our Managing Editor, who can reject submissions outright, if they are out of scope for the journal, do not adhere to our submission guidelines, or there is substantial percentage of similarity between the submissions and published material being in the public domain ((self-)plagiarism). Appropriate submissions are then assigned to the Editor-in-Chief who either handles them himself or assigns them to one of our Topical Editors.

The Topical Editors then make a decision based on the reviewers' advice, from among several possibilities: (a) Accept, with or without editorial revisions (b) Invite the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached (c) Reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission (d) Reject outright, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems.

Collections and special issues follow the standard peer review policy. The peer review process of any submission associated with a collection or special issue is handled by a Guest Editor working closely with a regular Editor or regular Editor who is responsible for assigning at least two reviewers to each article, evaluating the reviews and making a final decision. Should a Guest Editor be only responsible for inviting submissions this will be stated on the collection website. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editor has a competing interest is handled by another Editor who has no competing interests, to ensure that the evaluation of these submissions is completely objective.