Reviewing

Manuscripts should be reviewed by experts from multiple disciplines, not from a single discipline. The editor is the final arbiter on the best set of reviewers for a given manuscript, within the context of the following guidelines.
(a) When an article reports work that utilizes two or more methodologies, at least one expert for each methodology should typically review the paper.
(b) When an article reports work that utilizes only one methodology but is of interest to multiple disciplines, the reviewers should typically include one specialist on the methodology, and one person from each of the other disciplines potentially impacted theoretically.
(c) Extended articles should typically have four reviewers, regular articles three, and brief reports two. Because extended articles are expected to make more of a contribution than regular articles, more reviewers should evaluate them. Conversely, because brief reports make less of a contribution and must be processed quickly, two reviewers should typically suffice. Again, though, the editor should be the final arbiter of reviewer composition.

It is essential that reviewers appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of the Journal, and that they not adopt the narrow methodological perspectives that they might take when reviewing non-interdisciplinary work. Each editorial staff, together with the journal subcommittee, should draft a policy statement to be sent out with each manuscript reviewed. At this time, we recommend that the policy statement contain the following points:
(a) Besides assessing standard aspects of scientific rigor and impact, reviewers should assess the interdisciplinary significance of manuscripts. Papers that are only of interest to a single discipline are not appropriate for Cognitive Science.
(b) Reviewers should assess whether the interdisciplinary significance of a paper is deep versus superficial. A paper that has interdisciplinary depth is one that addresses the theoretical constructs of multiple fields, whereas a paper that is superficial simply utilizes interdisciplinary methods without having much impact on constructs across disciplines.
(c) Although timeliness is important in reviewing, providing substantive feedback to authors is of paramount performance. Reviewers should view their tasks as scientific communication and as helping authors improve the quality of their work in a constructive manner. Reviewers should not just view their task as playing the role of a gate keeper but also as helping researchers improve the quality of their work (without micromanaging it).

The Journal will maintain a computerized data base of reviewers. One purpose of this data base is to facilitate the process of identifying appropriate reviewers for a submission. A second purpose is to track the timeliness and quality of particular reviewers\' responses, so that we can avoid reviewers who chronically prevent timely action on manuscripts, and/or who tend to provide poor reviews. To achieve these goals, the entry for each reviewer contains the following information:
(a) Key words that describe the reviewer\'s areas of expertise.
(b) A list of the articles that the reviewer has reviewed, and the details of each review (how long it took to get the review, how many prompts were necessary, the reviewer\'s ratings and recommendations, etc.).
(c) Comments from action editors on the quality, usefulness, and appropriateness of the reviewer\'s responses.
(d) Summary statistics on each reviewer that come up as part of his/her profile.

Finally, when authors submit an article, they must provide 5 to 10 key words that can be used to search the data base for possible reviewers. The key words would also be used to construct the year-end index for the Journal.

The editorial staff should strive to achieve the following target times when handling manuscripts. From submission to action, regular articles should typically be handled in 3 months, brief reports in 6 weeks, and extended articles in 4 months. Reviewers should be instructed to send in their reviews two weeks before the target deadline, thereby giving action editors time to process the reviews and write an action letter. To facilitate meeting target dates, Elsevier is purchasing a tracking system that monitors the status of each submission and ensures that its processing adheres to the expected turn-around time. The tracking system is web-based and is thus accessible to all members of the editorial staff from their distributed sites. At the end of each year, the editor will compile statistics, not only on submissions and actions, but also on the average number of reviewers per article, average turn-around times for individual action editors, etc.