European Journal of Nutrition & Food Safety, ISSN: 2347-5641,Vol.: 8, Issue.: 4(October-December)

Original-research-article

Sodium and Saturated Fat Levels in Meat Products in the Netherlands: An Evaluation Based on Label Information

 

Suzan J. C. M. Janssen1, Kelly J. J. Neessen2, Elizabeth Dunford3,4, Hans Verhagen5,6,7 and Annet J. C. Roodenburg2*

1Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences , Maastricht University, P.O.Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.

2Department Nutrition and Health, HAS University of Applied Sciences, P.O.Box 90108, 5200 MA, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.

3The George Institute for Global Health, Level 5, 1 King St | Newtown NSW 2042, Australia.

4Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 137123 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, USA.

5National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), P.O.Box 1, 3720 BA Bilthoven, The Netherlands.

6Northern Ireland Centre for Food and Health (NICHE), University of Ulster, Cromore Road, Coleraine, BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland.

7Current affiliation: European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Parma, Italy.

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: 8.33/10

Average Peer review marks at publication stage: 9.5/10

Peer review history

Stage Description File 1 File 2
Stage 1 Original Manuscript File 1 NA
Stage 2 Initial Screening by ACE File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_1 (V. Sudershan Rao, India) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_2 (Gabriela Halpern, Brazil) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Peer review report_3 (Satyam Prakash, Nepal) File 1 File 2
Stage 2 Peer review report_4 (Benedikt Merz, Germany) File 1 NA
Stage 2 Revised_MS_v1_and_Feedback_v1 File 1 File 2
Stage 3 Comment_Editor_1_v1 File 1 NA
Stage 3 Comment_Editor_2_v1 File 1 NA