Accreditation and Quality Assurance - To our Reviewers
The reviewer comments are essential to maintain the quality level of Accreditation and Quality Assurance (ACQUAL)! The editors gratefully acknowledge the advice and support given by the reviewers on a voluntary basis and especially thank them for their valuable time.
The number of advisors experienced in metrology in chemistry is limited, so that there is not always a sufficient number of candidates with additional expertise in the experimental method, the sample type, the field of application, etc. Therefore, the editors kindly request invited reviewers to provide comments within their particular scope of competence and pointing out deficiencies - rather than declining the invitation.
Please use the Editorial Manager system for uploading your assessment. Feel free to contact the editor in case you experience difficulties or when you realize that you will not be able to send a report in time.
Reviewers are not required to make improvements to an inadequate language level of a manuscript, however, the editors welcome any recommendation in this matter. Please state clearly if the deficits obscure the message of the contribution. The publisher’s language editing services during the production process will correct basic grammar and style and see to formalities but cannot clarify scientific issues which are not comprehensible from the manuscript. Severe language deficits may therefore lead to a rejection.
If the "Comments to Author" require special characters (e.g., symbols), formatting (such as super- and subscripts), or equations please upload the comments as an additional Word file. Basically, the Editorial Manager system is not configured to handle corrected or annotated versions of the manuscript. In case you are going to revise a manuscript, please contact the editors at acqual.editoraf@gmail.com (this opens in a new tab) or avdveen@acqual.org (this opens in a new tab).
Your overall recommendation will be taken as follows:
accept the manuscript shall be sent into production as is
minor revision after primarily formal corrections etc., the manuscript can be accepted (usually the reviewer will not be consulted again)
revision scientific issues must be re-worded or even re-considered; the extent of adjustments and corrections is considerable
major revision unacceptable in present form, however the underlying idea, approach, results, etc. could be of interest to ACQUAL's readers
reject the reviewing process should be terminated; among the reasons may be inappropriateness of the topic, missing originality and importance of the message, incomprehensibility or ambiguity of the presentation, or the argumentation seriously flawed by demonstrable errors; however, not agreeing with conclusions or a particular approach should not be taken to be sufficient for rejecting.
When after (major) revision an amended manuscript is submitted, the reviewers of the original submission will be asked to check the revision along with the response of the authors to see whether previous reviewer comments have been adequately dealt with.
In case any question arises, please do not hesitate to contact the editors at acqual.editoraf@gmail.com (this opens in a new tab) or avdveen@acqual.org (this opens in a new tab).
Accreditation and Quality Assurance
Journal for Quality, Comparability and Reliability in Chemical Measurement
Editor-in-Chief: A. Fajgelj; A.M.H. van der Veen
ISSN: 0949-1775 (print version)
ISSN: 1432-0517 (electronic version)
Journal no. 769