Universitätsverlag Göttingen

Peer review procedure

Universitätsverlag Göttingen is a service of the university library and publishes peer-reviewed publications within the disciplinary scope of the Georg-August-University Göttingen.

All publications should reflect the high standard of the university. The press’ general publishing policy and the peer review system are under guidance of the editorial board of the press. All faculties of the university delegate one or more representative in the editorial board of the press. The names of delegates are publicly available at the press’ website.

All publications need to pass the following quality control. However not all publications have to meet the necessary quality standards or need to undergo peer review, for instance simple text books, reports and specific proceedings or publications that call for immediate publishing. For those publications the University Press runs its imprint “Universitätsdrucke”.

1. A first review is conducted by the staff’s press regarding formal criteria and the general quality of content. The staff members make sure that technical and formal quality standards are met by all authors and editors. The staff members are librarians and trained scientists. They decide whether a publication should be rejected, meets the minimum standard for the imprint “Universitätsdrucke” or should be forwarded to peer review. If the staff members are in doubt about the content they contact the respective subject librarian from their library or the specialist from the editorial board.

2. If a manuscript applies for peer review, it is forwarded by the press’ staff members to the respective member of the editorial board.

3. If the member of the editorial board is specialist enough to judge the quality of the publication themselves they review the publication and either reject, call for revision by the author(s) or recommend the publication to the editorial board. If they are not familiar enough with the topic of the publication they organise additional peer review and decide with the help of the external reviewers. The press’ staff assists in this process. All publications need to pass evaluation of the whole board. The board decides with majority principle. If after the recommendation of the first reviewer a member of the board calls for revision or has serious doubts production is stopped and additional review applies.

4. The staff makes sure that authors and editors meet revision requirements from the review process. If authors or editors are unwilling to meet these requirements publications can only appear within the imprint “Universitätsdrucke”.
   

5. The vast majority of publications at the Universitätsverlag Göttingen are published Open Access and publicly available via the web site of the press. Readers can therefore turn easily to the staff members of the press in case of questions or doubt about the academic quality of a specific publication.

The editorial board and the staff of the press are aware of their responsibility for the quality of publications at the Universitätsverlag Göttingen and continually discuss means to improve the procedures for quality assurance. The quality control process therefore undergoes regular evaluation. There is special awareness to make sure that the press does not support vanity publishing within the university and makes careful use of public funds.