The following points are intended to serve as general information for editors to help achieve high quality, as well as fast and accurate publications. The editor’s primary responsibilities are to obtain the draft manuscripts, conduct the peer review process, ensure the author addresses the peer review in an appropriate fashion, and check the final camera-ready manuscript for any technical, grammatical or typographical errors.

1. Role of the Editor

As a member of the editorial board of the publication, the editor is responsible for ensuring that the publication maintains the highest quality while adhering to the publication policies and procedures of the ISL (Information Security Letters)

The most important role of the editor is of finding appropriate reviewers for a manuscript. For each paper that the editor-in-chief assigns, the transactions assistant will send the editor a letter requesting that he/she handle the review process of the paper. Editors should assign more than two reviewers within a week upon receiving their editor assignment.

The editor is responsible for making a decision on an "accept", "reject", or "revision" based on reviewer’s reports. For the revision, the revised manuscript will be assigned to the same editor and sent out for a second round of reviews. Usually the same reviewers are used for the revised manuscript, but at the discretion of the editor. It is noticed that no more than one revision is given to the authors. Unless the revised version does meet the quality or requirements, the paper might be rejected without additional revision. There is an exception for the third revision chance given to the authors only if the editor-in-chief or editor allows for a special case such as rare paper, very high quality paper, or exceptionally interesting paper to the readers.

The editors for the publications of the ISL are responsible for the consistently high marks our transactions receive in the peer review community. By assuring the selection of appropriate reviewers to identify quality manuscripts, and by efficiently managing the peer review process, the quality and value of our publications are increased.

2. Deadlines for Regular Review

Editors have a week to submit a list of reviewers to the transactions assistant. Reviewers are given 6 weeks to review the paper. Editors are given a week to submit a recommendation to the editor-in-chief once all or enough of the reviews have come in. In revision case, authors have a maximum of a month to submit their revised manuscripts. The deadlines for the regular review process are as follows:

An accept decision means that an editor is accepting the paper with no further modifications. The paper will not be seen again by the editor or by the reviewers.

The manuscript is not suitable for the ISL publication.

The paper is conditionally accepted with some requirements. A revision means that the paper should go back to the original reviewers for a second round of reviews. We strongly discourage editors from making a decision based on their own review of the manuscript if a revision had been previously required.