Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Urban Transformations operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers do not know the names or affiliations of the authors and the reviewer reports provided to the authors are anonymous.

The benefit of double-blind peer review is that it allows reviewers to judge the manuscript based on content alone, and they are not unconsciously biased by knowledge of who the authors are.

Urban Transformations publishes the following article types:

Urban Transformations also publishes thematic collections. The peer review process of any submission associated with a thematic collection is handled by Guest Editors who are responsible for assigning at least two referees to each article and evaluating the reviews. Like our Associate Editors, Guest Editors make recommendations and request and evaluate revisions, but only the Editors-in-Chief can make final decisions of accept or reject on any thematic collection article. Any articles submitted to a thematic collection by Guest Editors are also handled confidentially by Associate Editors outside of the normal refereeing process of the thematic collection to ensure that the evaluation of these articles is completely objective.

Peer reviewing on Snapp

We've created a streamlined peer review system within Snapp, the Springer Nature Article Processing Platform, that guides you through the process.

You're invited to review based on your expertise in the field. Your feedback will help authors improve their work and help journal editors in making a final decision.

AI use by peer reviewers

Peer reviewers play a vital role in scientific publishing. Their expert evaluations and recommendations guide editors in their decisions and ensure that published research is valid, rigorous, and credible. Editors select peer reviewers primarily because of their in-depth knowledge of the subject matter or methods of the work they are asked to evaluate. This expertise is invaluable and irreplaceable. Peer reviewers are accountable for the accuracy and views expressed in their reports, and the peer review process operates on a principle of mutual trust between authors, reviewers and editors. Despite rapid progress, generative AI tools have considerable limitations: they can lack up-to-date knowledge and may produce nonsensical, biased or false information. Manuscripts may also include sensitive or proprietary information that should not be shared outside the peer review process. For these reasons we ask that, while Springer Nature explores providing our peer reviewers with access to safe AI tools, peer reviewers do not upload manuscripts into generative AI tools.

If any part of the evaluation of the claims made in the manuscript was in any way supported by an AI tool, we ask peer reviewers to declare the use of such tools transparently in the peer review report.

Peer-review policy

Peer reviewing on Snapp

AI use by peer reviewers

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