Anonymity during peer review

CHR operates on a double-anonymous peer review policy, with both authors and reviewers remaining anonymous throughout the peer review process. See the Preparing your materials page for further guidance on how to anonymise your manuscript.

Peer review process

All manuscripts submitted to CHR (including submissions to Themed Issues) will be peer reviewed by at least 2 reviewers (including both members of the Advisory Board and external reviewers): we expect that, for each manuscript, one reviewer will be selected based on their technical/methodological expertise, and the second reviewer will be selected on the basis of their field-specific expertise, in order to provide authors with rigorous feedback on both the methods employed in the study as well as the quality and originality of subject-specific research outcomes.

Guidance for reviewers

Reviewers will be asked to review underlying data (in cases where data sharing is possible for the authors) and underlying code (especially when the code plays a substantive part within the article).

Additionally, reviewers will be asked to score articles according to the criteria below:

• REPRODUCIBILITY. How reproducible are the main findings of the paper, using the data, code and/or methodology provided by the authors?
  If the full data can’t be shared (e.g., for copyright or privacy reasons), reviewers should assess how well the data acquisition and methodology are documented, and whether derived data or alternative access routes are provided.
• DATASETS. How valuable are the datasets accompanying the paper? 
  Reviewers should consider whether datasets are openly accessible (e.g., in a public repository with a persistent identifier), adequately documented (i.e., provenance, selection criteria, encoding/annotation decisions, licence), and reusable beyond the study in question. 
• SOFTWARE/CODE. How valuable is the code and/or software accompanying the paper? 
  Reviewers should consider whether the code/software is openly available (e.g., in a public repository),  adequately documented, and accessible (e.g., licensed for reuse).

Peer review timelines

We expect manuscripts to receive an initial decision (e.g., Desk Rejection; Major/Minor Revision) within 4 weeks from submission, and a final decision (e.g., Rejection; Acceptance) within 2 months from submission.

Co-reviewing policy

CHR allows co-reviewing. For more guidance on how co-reviewing works, please see the Cambridge Co-reviewing Policy.

Appeals

To appeal an editorial decision, please contact the Editors-in-Chief (chr@cambridge.org) and specify the reason for your appeal. 

Your appeal will be reviewed by an Editor-in-Chief and one (or more) Associate Editor(s) who did not review the manuscript originally. The final decision regarding your appeal will rest with the journal’s Editor-in-Chief.