Your Article in the Confidential Refereeing Phase

After the the author has made the revision, or decided to keep the paper as it is, the area editor invites two or three confidential referees to make a recommendation whether the article in its present form is to be accepted to the ETAI, or not. This decision should normally not take more than about a month. The ETAI Refereeing Criteria pose clear and well defined questions to the referees, and define the criteria whereby your article will be judged.

In principle, the review discussion ought to provide all the necessary feedback to the author, and the referees should only have to recommend "pass" or "fail" for the article. In practice, it sometimes happens that the confidential referees decide to make additional comments on articles. In such cases, the referee's comments are also posted on the article's Review Protocol Page, but of course without divulging the referee's identity. However, comments of minor importance are only sent to the author and not posted.

You will notice an important difference between the style of ETAI referee reports and the ones in ordinary journals: ETAI referee reports are written collegially, like if the referee had been addressing the author directly and made suggestions to him. This is very far from the authoritarian and judgemental style of referee reports in other journals. This difference in style, together with the openness where everyone can see the exchange of opinions between reviewers, referees, and authors, contribute to creating a good atmosphere for the whole feedback and quality control process in the ETAI.