Journal of Advanced Informatics in Water, Soil, and Structure

Journal History

Journal of Advanced Informatics in Water, Soil, and Structure (AIWSS) is an online, single-blind peer-reviewed, free, and open-access journal published semiannually by the University of Torbat Heydarieh (UTH) stablished since January 2024. Additionally, AIWSS has a cooperation with Iranian Irrigation and Drainage Scientific Association. With our broad scope, we welcome research from areas across advanced computations, and modeling related to water resources, structural engineering, and soil science (see aim and scope).

Peer Review Process

Journal of AIWSS uses a double-blind system: the reviewers' identities remain anonymous to the authors, while the reviewers can see the authors' identities. The paper will be peer-reviewed by three experts; one is the chief editor and the other two are internal editors and external reviewers. 

Responsibility for the Reviewers

As an editor or a reviewer, you are requested to find out about the originality of the manuscript you are urged to review. Therefore, it is recommended that you also see the Author Guidelines and Polices page to see which points authors should take into consideration prior to submission of their papers for publication.

Although reviewed articles are treated confidentially, reviewers’ judgments should be objective. Reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors, and/or the research funders, and reviewers should point out relevant published work that is not yet cited. 

Editorial Responsibilities

Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article. Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept, only accept a paper when reasonably certain, when errors are found, promote the publication of correction or retraction,  and preserve the anonymity of reviewers.

Review Guidelines

AIWSS highly appreciates their kind support by agreeing to review an article for our journal. Before they consent to evaluate any paper, the reviewers are requested to consider a number of points. First, if the paper is not in your area of research interest and expertise, please inform the editor and feel free to refuse to review it. Second, if you have no free time to evaluate the paper before the deadline, kindly inform the editor. Third, in case of any conflicts of interest, the reviewer’s acknowledgment can be very useful in our final decision. Therefore, if by any chance you have read the paper before or happen to know the authors, please inform the editor about this.

Kindly make sure you review the paper confidentially. Please avoid contacting the authors. In addition, should you feel the need to ask a third party for their comments, please make sure to inform the managing editor in advance.

Before they are sent to reviewers, all papers are previewed by our editor(s)-in-chief. The papers are also checked for their originality using the turn-it-in/iThenticate software. However, in our experience, there have been cases of plagiarism that the software has failed to detect. If you doubt the originality of any part(s) of the work you are reviewing, please inform the editor. In addition, if you suspect the accuracy or truth of any part(s) of the work under review, make sure to inform the editor about it.

AIWSS's reviewers are requested to evaluate the articles based on a number of evaluative criteria available in the review including the clarity, quality, thoroughness, relevance, significance, and soundness of the works. The reviewers score each of these criteria based on the quality of the work. Reviewers may leave comments on the manuscript itself and in the review form. These comments are very valuable for the professional development of any authors and will unquestionably help them improve their work.

Reviewers may also add their comments in the second section of the Review Form. Having reviewed the paper, the reviewer is requested to make any of the following decisions:

• Accept it as it is
• Accept with some minor or major corrections 
• Revise and resubmit 
• Reject

This decision should be based on the merits and demerits of the work under review.

AIWSS's papers are proofread before they are published, and the reviewers are by no means obliged to correct or mark language errors or typos. However, if the reviewers detect such cases, they are most welcome to highlight them.

AIWSS corresponds with its reviewers only through email; therefore, you are requested to email your report and in-text comments (if any) to the managing editor.

Reviewing is undoubtedly an invaluable and noble act that cannot be compensated by any means. However, this journal hopes to return this favor, at least in part, with occasional discounts for its reviewers if they wish to publish their works with us.

• Reviewers are requested to review the Review Policy of the journal before reviewing any paper (see here for more information). 

Disclaimer

In AIWSS the Managing Editor is not involved with the editorial decisions.   

 

Publication

Frequency

• AIWSS is a semiannual frequency journal.

• Finalized papers might be available in advance access mode for readers.  

Open Access Policy

Journal of AIWSS provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Copyright

• Copyright on any open access article in AIWSS, published by UTH is retained by the author(s).

Licensing

The journal is fully compliant with open access mandates, by publishing its articles under "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0).