Physical Science International Journal, ISSN: 2348-0130,Vol.: 15, Issue.: 3

Original-research-article

Natural Radioactivity and Radiological Risk  Estimation of Drinking Water from Okposi and Uburu Salt Lake Area, Ebonyi State, Nigeria

 

C. P. Ononugbo1* and B. U. Nwaka2

1Department of Physics, University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria.

2Department of Physics, Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria.

General Comment

1. Up to 6th August 2012, all SDI journals followed strict double-blind review policy to ensure neutral evaluation. During this review process identity of both, the authors and reviewers are kept hidden to ensure the unbiased evaluation. More information is available at this link.

 

2. We have migrated to transparent and toughest ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ system (Detailed general information is available at this link). The identity of the authors and reviewers will be revealed to each other during this review process. This transparent process will help to eradicate any possible malicious/purposeful interference by any person (publishing staff, reviewer, editor, author, etc) during peer review. As a result of this unique system, all reviewers will get their due recognition and respect, once their names are published in the papers (Example Link). If reviewers do not want to reveal their identities, we will honour that request. In that case, only the review reports will be published as ‘anonymous reviewer report’.

 

3. Additionally ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ greatly helps in ‘continuity and advancement of science’. We firmly believe that all the files related to peer review of a manuscript are valuable and hold an important place in the continuity and advancement of science. If publishers publish the peer review reports along with published papers, this process can result in savings of thousands of hours of future authors during experiments, manuscript preparation, etc. by minimising the common errors after reading these previously published peer review reports. Therefore, as per our new official policy update, if the manuscript is published, all peer review reports will be available to the readers. All files (like the original manuscript, comments of the reviewers, revised manuscript, and editorial comment (if any)) related to the peer review, will be available in “Review history” link along with the published paper (Example Link).

 

4. Additionally, we believe that one of the main objectives of peer review system is ‘to improve the quality of a candidate manuscript’. Normally we try to publish the ‘average marks (out of 10)’ a manuscript received at initial peer review stage and at final publication stage to record its history of improvement during peer review. This process further increases the transparency. It is more important to record the ‘strength and weakness of a manuscript honestly’ than claiming that 'our peer review system is perfect’. Therefore, these transparent processes (i.e. publication of review history files and scores of a particular manuscript) additionally give a clear idea of the strength and weakness of a published paper to the readers. This process enhances the chances of proper use of the result of research (and or reduces the chances of misuse of the weakness of the findings of the paper). Thus this transparent process may prove to be highly beneficial for the society in the long run.

 

Specific Comment

Average Peer review marks at initial stage: 5.7/10

Average Peer review marks at publication stage: 9/10

Peer review history

Stage Description File 1 File 2
Stage 1 Original Manuscript File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_1 (Hosam El-Din M. Saleh, Egypt) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_2 (Adriana Estokova, Slovakia) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_3 (María de Lourdes Villalba, Mexico) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_4 (Vigilija Cidzikiene, Lithuania) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_5 (Marija Jankovic, Serbia) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Revised MS v1 and Feedback v1 File 1 File 2
Stage 2 Re-Review report_1_v1 (Hosam El-Din M. Saleh, Egypt) (No Response) NA NA
Stage 2 Re-Review report_2_v1 (Adriana Estokova, Slovakia) (No Response) NA NA
Stage 2 Re-Review report_3_v1 (María de Lourdes Villalba, Mexico) (No Response) NA NA
Stage 2 Re-Review report_4_v1 (Vigilija Cidzikiene, Lithuania) (No Response) NA NA
Stage 2 Re-Review report_5_v1 (Marija Jankovic, Serbia) File 1 NA
Stage 3 Comment_Editor_1_v1 File 1 NA
Stage 3 Revised MS v2 and Feedback v2 File 1 File 2
Stage 3 Comment_Editor_2_v1 File 1 NA