Review criteria
| Principal criteria | Excellent (1) | Good (2) | Fair (3) | Poor (4) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific Significance: Does the manuscript represent a substantial contribution to the understanding of natural hazards and their consequences (new concepts, ideas, methods, or data)? |
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| Scientific Quality: Are the scientific and/or technical approaches and the applied methods valid? Are the results discussed in an appropriate and balanced way (clarity of concepts and discussion, consideration of related work, including appropriate references)? |
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| Presentation Quality: Are the scientific data, results and conclusions presented in a clear, concise, and well-structured way (number and quality of figures/tables, appropriate use of technical and English language, simplicity of the language)? |
Access review, peer review, and interactive public discussion
Manuscripts submitted to NHESS at first undergo a rapid access review by the editor (initial manuscript evaluation), which is not meant to be a full scientific review but to identify and sort out manuscripts with obvious deficiencies in view of the above principal evaluation criteria. If they are not immediately rejected, they will be posted as preprints on EGUsphere or in the discussion forum NHESSD where they are subject to full peer review and interactive public discussion. Since a manuscript in discussion is publicly accessible, it should meet general criteria of readability. It should be well-written, well-referenced, and well-structured. Figures and tables should be in good shape and referred to accordingly. In addition, the manuscript in discussion should contribute something new and interesting to the community.
In the full review and interactive discussion the referees and other interested members of the scientific and technical communities are asked to take into account all of the following aspects:
- Does the paper address relevant scientific and/or technical questions within the scope of NHESS?
- Does the paper present new data and/or novel concepts, ideas, tools, methods or results?
- Are these up to international standards?
- Are the scientific methods and assumptions valid and outlined clearly?
- Are the results sufficient to support the interpretations and the conclusions?
- Does the author reach substantial conclusions?
- Is the description of the data used, the methods used, the experiments and calculations made, and the results obtained sufficiently complete and accurate to allow their reproduction by fellow scientists (traceability of results)?
- Does the title clearly and unambiguously reflect the contents of the paper?
- Does the abstract provide a concise, complete and unambiguous summary of the work done and the results obtained?
- Are the title and the abstract pertinent, and easy to understand to a wide and diversified audience?
- Are mathematical formulae, symbols, abbreviations and units correctly defined and used? If the formulae, symbols or abbreviations are numerous, are there tables or appendixes listing them?
- Is the size, quality and readability of each figure adequate to the type and quantity of data presented?
- Does the author give proper credit to previous and/or related work, and does he/she indicate clearly his/her own contribution?
- Are the number and quality of the references appropriate?
- Are the references accessible by fellow scientists?
- Is the overall presentation well structured, clear and easy to understand by a wide and general audience?
- Is the length of the paper adequate, too long or too short?
- Is there any part of the paper (title, abstract, main text, formulae, symbols, figures and their captions, tables, list of references, appendixes) that needs to be clarified, reduced, added, combined, or eliminated?
- Is the technical language precise and understandable by fellow scientists?
- Is the English language of good quality, fluent, simple and easy to read and understand by a wide and diversified audience?
- Is the amount and quality of supplementary material (if any) appropriate?
Peer-review completion (NHESS)
At the end of the interactive public discussion, the authors may make their final response and submit a revised manuscript. Based on the referee comments, other relevant comments, and the authors' response in the public discussion, the revised manuscript is re-evaluated and rated by the editor. If rated excellent or good in all of the principal criteria and specific aspects listed above, the revised manuscript will normally be accepted for publication in NHESS. Additional advice from the referees in the evaluation and rating of the revised manuscript will be requested by the editor if the public discussion on EGUsphere or in NHESSD is not sufficiently conclusive.