The Appeal Process for the Journal of Turbomachinery

David Bogard

Editor, Journal of Turbomachinery

For papers originally reviewed during the TURBO EXPO (TE) Conference review process, but not recommended for publication in the Journal.

An appeal should be based on one (or more) of the following:

Reviews were not substantive or were questionable, or reasons given by the reviewers for not recommending journal publication were vague or inadequate.
Revisions that satisfied the reviewer concerns were made, but the paper was not re-reviewed by reviewers to confirm that the paper was now appropriate for journal publication.
Moderate revisions of the paper were made after the review process, and the authors believe these revisions will satisfy the reviewers’ concerns.

If the authors believe that their appeal satisfies one or more of the above criteria, they should submit an appeal using the following steps:

Prepare a document providing your reasons for appealing the conference chair’s decision not to recommend your paper for journal publication. This document should be specific about the basis for the appeal referring to one or more of the three items listed above. The authors should provide a detailed response to each reviewer comments indicating adjustments made to the paper to address the comment, or a rebuttal of the reviewer recommendations. Authors should pay particular attention to address issues listed by the reviewers in the section “Summary statement of reasons for or against recommendation for journal consideration” of the review document. It is important that you justify why your paper is of archival value despite the opinions of reviewers of the paper you submitted for the conference.
The authors should provide a copy of the final version of your paper with changes made to the paper in response to reviewer comments highlighted in yellow. If changes were made following the conference, the authors should note at the top of the first page “REVISIONS MADE FOLLOWING CONFERENCE”, and note these changes by highlighting in blue.
Submit your appeal using the ASME JournalTool for submission of papers to the Journal of Turbomachinery. (Guidelines for submission of papers using the JournalTool are provided at the end of this document). Because the journal tool will accept only one document for initial paper submissions, the submission of your paper appeal will be a two-step process as follows:
1. Upload a PDF of the revised paper as described above as the “draft paper” being submitted. Enter a brief statement into the “Authors Comments” box indicating that you wish to appeal the conference Review Chair’s recommendation that your paper not be considered for journal publication.
2. Once your submission has been checked by the journal editor, you will receive a notice to submit a revised paper. When you receive this notice, resubmit the PDF of your revised paper as the “revised paper”. You will also submit via the “Authors Comments” a PDF of the document describing the basis of your appeal as described in item (1) above.

DO NOT SEND the PDF file or a copy of the paper to the Editor’s email. The Editor cannot do anything with such a copy. All processing must be handled through the ASME Journal Tool.

Steps in processing your appeal:

Upon receipt of the authors’ PDF files in the Journal Tool, the Journal Editor will:
1. Examine the author’s PDF files to assure that the author has provided the necessary information. If the PDF files are incomplete, the editor will request complete PDF files.
2. Examine the appeal material submitted by the author(s) to assure that a reasonable appeal request is being made.
3. If it is quite clear that the appeal is valid, the editor may, at his or her discretion, accept the appeal and approve the paper for publication without further review by the Associate Editors.
4. If step (3) above does not apply, the Editor will assign the paper to an Associate Editor (AE). The Editor will provide to the AE the names and contact information of the original reviewers and session organizer.
The AE will:
1. Examine the revised manuscript, the document showing previous reviews and authors’ responses to these reviews, and any Editor’s comments about the merits of the appeal. The AE may:
  1. Recommend to the Editor that the original reviews were fair and the paper is still not journal quality and should not be published
  2. Proceed with a re-review of the paper.
2. Chose reviewers. The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the AE. The AE may:
  1. use the original reviewers if the AE concludes that the reviewers are expert and the reviews were fair, complete and clear.
  2. use new reviewers if the AE decides the authors have made a good case for the original reviews being flawed.
3. Invite appropriate reviewers for the paper, and coordinate the reviews of the paper.
4. Once reviews are complete, the AE will make a ‘publish’ or ‘no publish’ recommendation to the Editor.
The Editor will examine the AE’s recommendation and reach a decision to publish or not publish the appeal manuscript. The Editor’s decision is final and cannot be appealed.

Instructions for uploading papers using the ASME Journal Tool

Access the Journal Tool web site using https://journaltool.asme.org

On the journaltool.asme.org site there is a horizontal menu bar near the top which contains several selections. Click “Author Center”. A drop down box will appear with the following three selections: Author Resources, Submit Paper, and Paper Status. Select Submit Paper, and you will be receive a note “Access Restricted”, select “CONTINUE” and you will be asked to log in using your ASME login information (same as you had for submission of your conference paper). You should see the following screen:

On this screen select “Journal of Turbomachinery” under the list of journal provided.

After you hit “CONTINUE”, your screen will update to the “Enter Paper Details” screen. On this screen provide the following information:

Paper Type: Research Paper Title: Insert paper title Abstract: Insert paper abstract

Keywords: Select Keywords from the available list

File Upload: Upload a PDF of your conference paper

Your comments: write the following: “We are appealing the ‘unsatisfactory for journal’ recommendation by the conference review.”

Conference Acknowledgement

Conference: 2019 Turbomachinery Technical Conference and Exposition

Paper Number: GT2019-xxxxx