Young Scientist call for Reviewers in 2017
Young Scientist Call for Reviewers in 2017
If you are a post-doctoral fellow or graduate student in a science-related field, we invite you to visit www.youngscientistjournal.org and sign up (under the CONTACT US tab) to become a reviewer for this upcoming year. If you have any questions about Young Scientist, please email the editor, Hadley Lawler, at hadley.m.lawler@vanderbilt.edu.
Guidelines for Review of Manuscripts submitted to Young Scientist
Young Scientist is an interdisciplinary research journal published by Vanderbilt, highlighting research conducted by high school students in Vanderbilt laboratories. The journal will host twenty research articles annually. The articles will be no more than three pages in length including a maximum of three figures while supplementary material will be made available at an online website. We therefore expect the burden for reviewers to be limited. As the manuscript must be understandable to the educated public, it is acceptable and even encouraged if the reviewer is outside of the primary field of research discussed in the manuscript.
Each reviewer will receive two 3 page articles that follow the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) template. The initial review period is December 1 – December 15, 2016. The students will make revisions and formulate a rebuttal letter which will be received by reviewers by January 15th, 2017 for final Accept/Reject decisions.
Journal Audience and Article Structure
The journal targets the educated public and will be distributed on campus, online, and at local high-schools. Therefore manuscripts must be written in a language that is clear and free of academic slang. An introductory paragraph should state the background, significance, and objective of the research conducted understandable to the educated public. Materials and methods section should be kept at a minimum but still at a higher level of science. Results should be presented focusing on the most significant findings. Data should be presented in easy to understand figures and tables. Discussion should highlight most important aspects that are of general interest. Conclusions should be concise.
Comments from Reviewers (in part taken form JACS – Journal of the American Chemical Society)
Reviewers should give estimates of the scientific value of the work, together with some basis for their opinion. They should indicate whether the writing is clear, concise, and relevant. Personal comments should be avoided. Please be as specific as possible if revision by the Author is recommended. Indicate specifically whether descriptions of methods, tables of data, etc., should be reduced or eliminated with the understanding that they would be available to specialists in the form of Supporting Information or in some other way. Is the manuscript likely to be of interest to the broad readership of the Journal? Are the conclusions adequately supported by the data presented? Are the literature references appropriate and correct? Does the nomenclature used conform with accepted practice?
Outcome of the Review
Make a recommendation to a) Accept manuscript as is, b) Accept manuscript with minor revisions, c) Accept manuscript with major revisions (revised version will be sent back to you for review), d) Reject manuscript.
While being critical, keep in mind that this is the first manuscript of a high-school student. We hope to accept most manuscripts. Given the limited experience of the writers, we expect major revisions are needed in most cases. In short, don’t be shy to critique, but be specific and constructive. Reject manuscripts that even major revisions cannot fix! The final manuscript needs to be at high quality. Some manuscripts will be inconsistent with the template (provided in the online folder), have figures that take lots of space, tables that have little information, have figures with unnecessary color, etc… You are encouraged to list major issues with such formatting questions that interfere with the quality of the presentation. The editors will also reformat manuscripts to comply with the template.