SIURO Editorial Information | SIAM
 

SIURO Editorial Information

Editorial Policy


SIAM Undergraduate Research Online (SIURO) consists of articles written by undergraduates in applied and computational mathematics. The undergraduate (or teams of students) must have made a significant contribution both to the research results and in the writing. In addition, undergraduates engage in the peer-review process as corresponding authors and through revision based on referee and review editor written feedback. Faculty advisers or sponsors are not listed as coauthors, but their guidance is recognized.

Review Procedures

Conflicts of Interest and Re-routing

It is vital that conflicts of interest be avoided. Therefore, it is SIAM policy that editors not review papers authored by students, or recent former students. The same policy applies to referees: editors should not send papers to referees who work at an author's institution or who are known to have close ties to the author. To help avoid conflicts of interest, it is SIAM policy that editors who receive manuscript submissions or who are assigned manuscripts that present a conflict of interest contact the SIAM office and the editor-in-chief to request that the manuscript be reassigned.

If the associate editor is unable or unwilling to handle a given submission, either because of workload difficulties, because the submission is outside his/her areas of expertise or for any other reason, he or she should email the editor-in-chief and copy the SIAM office. The editor-in-chief will reassign the manuscript to another editor.


Manuscript Review

Once the SIAM office contacts the associate editor about the assignment, the editor should contact referees through the Assign Potential Referees interface in the web-based system. SIAM asks that referees complete their review and send their reports in an accelerated time frame, preferably within 45 days. If reports lag, the associate editor or the SIAM office will prompt the referees.

Referees are required to complete a report and the review editor may choose to include it in his or her decision letter to the author. The referees' names are always kept confidential.


Option for Editor-in-Chief Assistance

There may be some instances in which the review editor feels uncomfortable making a decision on a paper or communicating a decision to the author. In such cases, the associate editor has the option of contacting the editor-in-chief for assistance or to request that the editor-in-chief make the decision and/or communicate the decision to the author.


Status Changes and Communicating with Authors

It is vital that, in all communications with authors, editors avoid wording that could make the status of the paper seem unclear (e.g., in a rejection message to the author: Is the intent to reject clear, or is a revision being implicitly encouraged?).

Papers may also be deemed withdrawn when an author fails to revise a paper within a reasonable amount of time and has not responded to inquiries. The decision to close out a manuscript is made jointly by the SIAM office and the editors. Files are never closed out without first giving the author ample opportunity to respond to prompts and submit a revision.

Read Guidelines for Reviewers