Knowledge and Information Systems An International Journal ISSN: 0219-1377 (printed version) ISSN: 0219-3116 (electronic version) by Springer

Guidelines for Members of Editorial Board

1. The Editor-in-Chief collects submissions, and delegates each submission to an Editorial Board member (referred to as the handling editor hereafter).

2. The handling editor assigns and sends a paper to at least three reviewers, makes a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief based on the review reports.
   • An early recommendation is encouraged if only two consistent reviews are received timely.
   • One Reject or Strong Reject review is enough to reject a paper, if this negative review makes sense to the handling editor.
   • A reviewer can be either an EB member or another person appointed by the handling editor.
   • An Administrative Reject is encouraged if the handling editor finds a paper to be clearly below the journal's publication standards. In this case, the handling editor can write a report to list the paper's weaknesses, without the necessity of sending the paper to any external reviewers for reports.

   The handling editor should avoid two reviewers from the same research group when handling a paper submission.

3. Although the final editorial decision will lie with the Editor-in-Chief, the technical recommendation as to whether the paper is publishable lies with the handling editor. It is the responsibility of the handling editor to work on papers that need to be resubmitted or accepted based on modifications suggested by the reviewers.

   A minimum of two review reports are required to make a recommendation. A possible recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief may be acceptance or rejection.

4. If the paper requires revisions, the handling editor interacts with the authors directly. If a reviewer has suggested a major revision, the revised paper should be sent back to the original reviewer whenever possible.

5. The Editor-in-Chief will inform the authors about their paper decision and copy to the handling editor.

6. It is the handling editor's responsibility to make sure that there is no conflict of interest for those people involved in reviewing any given paper.

   If a reviewer feels that his/her decision will be affected, he/she should return the paper to the handling editor, stating the conflict of interest. Similarly, the handling editor should not send the paper to be reviewed by a reviewer who may have a conflict of interest. Examples of cases which could cause conflict of interest include:

   • papers by an author with which the handling editor or reviewer has co-authored a paper recently.

   • papers by an author in the same department or in a closely related discipline of the same university as the handling editor or reviewer.

   • papers by an author who was a recent student or thesis adviser of the handling editor or reviewer.

7. A handling editor should make a recommendation within three months (six weeks for short papers) from the date that the paper is received from the authors. The handling editor should normally allow six weeks (three weeks for short papers) for each reviewer to respond.

8. The handling editor should keep records on reviewer performance and timeliness.