NCB Peer Review
Submission Guidelines and Form
Submission formats
Submissions can be papers, part of papers, individual analyses, analysis pipelines, figures, or teaching material. An overview over formats can be found in the table below. Other formats can be suggested to the NCB core team for the review process. Data and code do not need to be submitted. If the submission of code or data is considered helpful or necessary for the review, they should be exchanged directly with the reviewer after the reviewee-reviewer pair has been formed.
All submissions need to be complete and explained well enough for the reviewers to assess without prior knowledge of the project, e.g. analyses must be described in detail and figures need to be accompanied by clear figure descriptions. For the reviewer selection, the submission must contain a brief abstract (ca. ½ A4 page or shorter) as well as a list of keywords (3-10) which can be subject specific (e.g. chromatin, RNA-seq) or general (e.g. data visualization, covariance).
Time frame
Reviews will take between three weeks and one month (one to two weeks for the assignment of reviewers and about two weeks for the actual review). If feedback is urgent, this can be indicated upon submission. There is however no guarantee that such requests can be fulfilled.
Confidentiality
All reviews are conducted under a code of conduct that requires reviewers not to disclose the content of reviews to others, or use unique or novel ideas of others for their own work. You decide on which part of your work you want to submit. In addition, we accept redacted submissions, i.e. gene names or exact perturbations can be anonymized as “gene x” and “perturbation y” respectively. The submissions are only visible to the selected reviewer(s) and the NCB core team and treated confidentially. Submissions are only stored for the time of the review plus an extra month for potential follow-ups.
Work
Description
Format
Paper (or a part thereof)
A manuscript draft that includes at least background, results and detailed methods. If a part of a paper is submitted, it must contain all relevant parts of these sections.
PDF, figures in text, detailed figure descriptions under each figure
Figures
A set of figures from a specific project, together with necessary background, and detailed text about the analysis performed.
PDF, detailed figure descriptions under each figure
Pipelines
Description of an analysis pipeline. The pipeline should be in itself complete. For each step it should be clear what the input, the desired output and the intended computation is. If necessary, options and parameters should be provided.
Well-commented flow-chart or pseudo-code as PDF
Analyses
Description of an analysis, its results and the resulting figures. The analysis should be in itself complete. Background and aim of the analysis should be described. Inputs and desired outcomes should be clear.
Compendium of text, figures, and flowcharts or pseudocode in logical order (see also formats above)
Teaching material
Teaching materials can include presentations and tutorials / practical exercises. The context and level of the teaching should be indicated. If tutorials or practical exercises are included they must be assessable without being run, or self-contained, so that they can be run by anyone without extensive set-up or installations.
Presentations as PDF, tutorial text as PDF, if exercises are included they need to self contained
Other pieces of work
Other types of submissions can be considered through communication with the NCB core team.
To be determined