Journal Policies

Peer-review policy

All submissions are initially assessed by a member of the editorial team, who decides whether or not the article is suitable for peer review. Submissions considered suitable for peer review are assigned to two or more subject experts, who assess the article for clarity, validity, and sound methodology. If suitable experts external to the journal cannot be found, then members of the Editorial Board may be asked to complete a review task.

The journal operates a single-blind peer review process, meaning that reviewers remain anonymous throughout the review process. The review period is expected to take around six to eight weeks, although this can vary depending on reviewer availability. Reviewers are asked to provide formative feedback, even if an article is not deemed suitable for publication in the journal.

Based on the reviewer reports a member of the editorial team will make a recommendation for rejection, minor or major revisions, or acceptance. Overall editorial responsibility rests with the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, who is supported by an expert, international Editorial Board.

In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that submission, and another member of the editorial team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review. Any competing interest must also be declared within the submission and any resulting publication.

  • Reviewers and authors of manuscripts should not be close colleagues, family members, work on the same research project or otherwise work closely together.
  • Reviewers should only accept assignments to assess manuscripts that fall within subject areas appropriate to their expertise.
  • Reviewers should respond to invitations and submit comments within a reasonable period of time, as peer review is necessary for the academic process.
  • Reviewers' comments should not be influenced by nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or any of the author's characteristics; or by commercial interests.
  • Comments from reviewers must be free from hostile or provocative language.

Review protocols shall not include personal attacks, libel or derogatory comments.

Article Processing Charges

There are no Article Processing Charges for publishing in Snow Leopard Reports.  

Authorship criteria

Every author (and any co-authors) must meet the following criteria:

  1. They must have made a substantial contribution to the design of the study, the collection of data or the analysis and/or interpretation of the data;
  1. They must have drafted the manuscript or helped revise it, thus significantly shaping its intellectual content;
  1. They must have approved the submitted manuscript.

Each author should be able to take public responsibility for a portion of the paper’s content, and should be able to identify the co-authors who are responsible for the remaining content.

Policy for open data

As research funders’ and higher education institutions’ demands for open research data become more common, some authors may be obliged to make their collected empirical material open and accessible to all. In cases where this applies to the journal’s authors, the journal encourages that the material be made available in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). The material thus made available must be linked to, within the submitted manuscript, under a special heading. Research data should then be published when the article is published. Empirical material obtained from other researchers must be referenced in the same way as other scientific sources.     

Policy for use of ORCID

The journal strongly recommends that all authors who submit a text to the journal register an ‘Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier’, a so-called ORCID iD. This registration gives researchers a unique and stable digital author identifier that ensures that the article is attributed to the right person and improves the searchability of all the author's publications. This helps to ensure that the author receives recognition for his or her work. Because a person's ORCID iD remains the same as long as the account exists, any name changes, changes of employment, department affiliation or research field do not affect the searchability of the person’s previous publications, which facilitates correspondence between research colleagues.

The journal encourages all its authors to include their ORCID iD along with other author information when the manuscript is registered in the system. If the article is accepted, this will then be published with the article.

Policy for previous versions of articles

The journal allows authors to upload previous drafts of their manuscripts to appropriate publishing services, provided that the author accepts the following conditions:

  • The author retains all rights to any pre-published version and has permission to submit his or her text to the journal.
  • The author accepts that the journal cannot guarantee full anonymity in the review process, even if the submitted files have been anonymised (see review policy) as previous versions are available.
  • If the text is published in the journal, the author is expected to cross-link (with DOI link) the two versions of the work.

Publication frequency

The journal is published online as one continuous issue/volume per year. Articles are published as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in making content publicly available.

Special collections of articles are welcomed and will be published as part of the regular issue as well as on a separate special collections page.

Correction policy

The conditions for publication with persistent identifiers such as DOI include that the object published is final and does not change without the reader being clearly informed of changes.

Articles published in the journal can thus not be changed without an erratum or change notice being published and linked to the original article.

If a factual error in an article is discovered, this should be reported to the Editor-in-Chief, who decides on further action and any corrections.

Sponsors

Snow Leopard Trust sponsors the article processing charges of publications and staff time of the Editorial Office. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences sponsors administrative help for the journal.