Peer Review Policy

All published articles are peer reviewed.

Series' policy encourages the use of blinded peer review and, when it is possible, multiple reviewers.

Reviews must be conducted by expert referees, who have been requested to provide unbiased and constructive comments aimed, whenever possible, at improving the work.

Proceedings editors must take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the materials they publish.

Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:

• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors.
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper.
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g., Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department, and institution).

At submission, the series currently allows authors to recommend or oppose reviewers. Note, however, that the Editor in Chief views these as a guideline and may follow or disregard this information at their discretion. No more than one recommended reviewer is permitted to serve on a review team.

The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Series. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board, and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

By accepting an invitation to review with an EWA Publishing series, reviewers agree to act in accordance with generally accepted publication ethics and best practices (including the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE). EWA Publishing supports and follows these guidelines as well. The reviewer also understands that good quality manuscripts that a series is unable to accept may be referred to series in a similar subject area within EWA Publishing's network. Such manuscripts and their peer review reports will be transferred to the receiving series to expedite any further evaluation and the editor's decision. The reviewer grants EWA Publishing the right to re-use the peer review reports in providing publishing services, including transfer of manuscripts and fulfillment of series and COPE guidelines. The reviewer also consents to the possible transfer of their name, email, and review to a relevant alternate series. In cases where a manuscript has been transferred from a series that does not participate in Transparent Peer Review to a series that does, any reviews submitted to the original series will not be transferred.

EWA Publishing is committed to supporting reviewers, authors and editors in ensuring integrity across all aspects of the publishing process. COPE's Core Practices are at the centre of our publication workflows and inform our work in protecting confidentiality throughout peer review. Accordingly, we expect all peer reviewers to respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of a manuscript or communications related to it, during or after the peer review process, beyond those that are released by the series. For series with single-, double- or triple-anonymized review models, this confidentiality obligation extends to the review and all communications regarding the review.

We also require that authors respect the confidentiality of the peer review process, unless the series has adopted an open review policy. Series with open review policies will have this noted within their Author Guidelines.