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Submission and reviewing guidelines for the Semantic Web – Interoperability, Usability, Applicability journal.

Review Process

The Semantic Web Journal relies on an open and transparent review process. Submitted manuscripts are posted on the journal's website and are publicly available. In addition to solicited reviews selected by members of the editorial board, public reviews and comments are welcome by any researcher and can be uploaded using the journal website. All reviews and responses from the authors are posted on the journal homepage. All involved reviewers and editors will be acknowledged in the final printed version. While we strongly encourage reviewers to participate in the open and transparent review process it is still possible to submit anonymous reviews.

The standard workflow of the review process is as follows.

1. Authors submit their article using the journal website. Submissions are screened to filter out articles which clearly fail to match the quality standards of the journal - these are rejected outright.
2. The article is made available on the journal website. The submission is announced on the journal blog. An editorial board member (EBM) is assigned to the article.
3. The EBM solicits three reviews, usually to be completed within 6 weeks. The EBM also openly invites other researchers in the area to write public reviews for the manuscript.
4. The reviews of the solicited reviewers are posted on the journal website – usually together with their names and affiliations (the EBM may elect to arrange a brief discussion among the solicited reviewers, in particular if opinions differ drastically). Reviewers may choose to remain anonymous. Any other researcher can choose to become a reviewer for the article by posting a non-anonymous review on the journal homepage. These reviews will be made available as soon as the solicited reviews are online.
5. The EBM, together with the journal editors, decide on acceptance or rejection of the article.
6. If the article gets accepted, all reviewers and editors which were substantially involved are named in the final version.
7. The authors are strongly encouraged to upload the final drafts of accepted versions on their local websites. The official SWJ layout version will be made available through IOS Press.

Authors of rejected manuscripts may request, after a minimum of 4 weeks following the notification, that their articles and reviews are removed from the public journal website and made available only to members of the Editorial Board. The journal editors reserve the right to remove reviews which do not follow established good scholarly practice.

Submission Types

The journal invites high-quality submissions on all topics related to the Semantic Web, including the use of semantic technologies in other contexts than the World Wide Web. Submissions can fall in one of the following categories.

• Full papers – containing original research results. Results previously published at conferences or workshops may be submitted as extended versions. These submissions will be reviewed along the usual dimensions for research contributions which include originality, significance of the results, and quality of writing.
• Survey articles – full-length papers surveying the state of the art of topics central to the journal's scope. Authors may want to contact the editors before writing a survey. Survey articles should have the potential to become well-known introductory and overview texts. These submissions will be reviewed along the following dimensions: (1) Suitability as introductory text, targeted at researchers, PhD students, or practitioners, to get started on the covered topic. (2) How comprehensive and how balanced is the presentation and coverage. (3) Readability and clarity of the presentation. (4) Importance of the covered material to the broader Semantic Web community.
• Descriptions of ontologies – short papers describing ontology modeling and creation efforts. The descriptions should be brief and pointed, indicating the design principles, methodologies applied at creation, comparison with other ontologies on the same topic, and pointers to existing applications or use-case experiments. It is strongly encouraged, that the described ontologies are free, open, and accessible on the Web. If this is not possible, then the ontologies have to be made available to the reviewers. For commercial ontologies, exceptions can be arranged through the editors. These submissions will be reviewed along the following dimensions: (1) Quality and relevance of the described ontology (convincing evidence must be provided). (2) Illustration, clarity and readability of the describing paper, which shall convey to the reader the key aspects of the described ontology.
• Application reports – short papers describing deployed applications of Semantic Web technologies. The reports should be brief and pointed, indicating clearly, in what sense and to what extent semantic technologies have been used in the application. These submissions will be reviewed along the following dimensions: (1) Quality, importance, and impact of the described application (convincing evidence must be provided). (2) Clarity and readability of the describing paper, which shall convey to the reader the key ideas regarding the application of Semantic Web technologies in the application.
• Reports on tools and systems – short papers describing mature Semantic Web related tools and systems. These reports should be brief and pointed, indicating clearly the capabilities of the described tool or system. It is strongly encouraged, that the described tools or systems are free, open, and accessible on the Web. If this is not possible, then they have to be made available to the reviewers. For commercial tools and systems, exceptions can be arranged through the editors. These submissions will be reviewed along the following dimensions: (1) Quality, importance, and impact of the described tool or system (convincing evidence must be provided). (2) Clarity, illustration, and readability of the describing paper, which shall convey to the reader both the capabilities and the limitations of the tool. See also the comments at http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/content/special-call-semantic-web-to...

For alternative types of submissions, please contact the editors.

Submitting Reviews

To submit a solicited review, please do so via mstracker, using the link which was included in the review request email from the mstracker system.

To submit an open review, please login on this site and post the review as a comment to the manuscript page. Note that all reviews will be screened for appropriate language before being made available publicly.

Information for Editorial Board Members

EB workflow (access restricted to EB members)