Today, I made a revision on our journal's reviewer invitation letter. 

I think, a reviewer invitation letter should contain the following information:

1. The addressee and letter writter 

2. The title and abstract of the manuscript sent for review 

3. A short journal introduction

4. Journal's peer-review policy: OA peer-review, Single-blinded peer-review, Double-blinded peer-review 

5. To state the referee confidentiality rules

6. To state referee's responsibility in keeping good academic ethics in accepting invitation and making comments. 

7. The total time period for the review. 

8. Possible returns to the reviewers who have made peer-review and have made quality peer-review. 

----------------------------------

Dear Prof. XXX

Manuscript ID (Document not available) entitled "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" is submitted to the Journal of Mountain Science (JMS), a SCI-indexed international English journal.

I invite you to review this manuscript. The abstract appears at the end of this letter. Please let me know as soon as possible if you will be able to accept my invitation to review. If you are unable to review at this time, I would appreciate you recommending another expert reviewer. You may e-mail me with your reply or click the appropriate link at the bottom of the page to automatically register your reply with our online manuscript submission and review system.

Once you accept my invitation to review this manuscript, you will be notified via e-mail about how to access ScholarOne Manuscripts, our online manuscript submission and review system. You will then have access to the manuscript and reviewer instructions in your Reviewer Center.

JMS takes double-blinded peer-review policy. If the reviewer is willing to be known by the authors and hope to have further communication with the authors, we can provide the authors’names and email addresses after the reviewer submit his comments.  

The time period for this review totally is 21 days. Our manuscript center will send two reminding letter to you during the period. If you cannot complete the review within the given time, please kindly write to tell us to extend the deadline for you. 

I realize that our expert reviewers greatly contribute to the high standards of the Journal, and I thank you for your present and/or future participation.

We subscribe to referee confidentiality rules. Reviewers should not reveal or divulge the contents to any third party during or after the assessment. On the other hand, we are aware of the relatively common practice of handing a review onto someone else in the laboratory. If carried out correctly, this can in fact be an important part of training, but it should be reserved for experienced postdoctoral researchers. Thus, The JMS journal allows co-refereeing with one other senior member of a referee's laboratory as part of the mentoring process only if the primary referee has independently evaluated the manuscript and agrees with the report filed. For co-review, conflict of interest and confidentiality rules apply to both referees. In order to provide accountability and appropriate credit, we request that the name of the co-referee be documented to the editors. If an invited referee does not have the time to review, another member of the laboratory or institute can be recommended to the editors.

You can also visit the JMS web to read the Guide to Reviewers at http://jms.imde.ac.cn/for-reviewers.

Journal of Mountain Science is a member of the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), the reviewers are expected to follow the COPE Ethical Guidelines for

Peer Reviewers (http://publicationethics.org/files/Ethical_guidelines_for_peer_reviewers_0.pdf).

The reviewer should have the expertise in relevant fields.

The reviewer does not have interest conflict with the authors.

The reviewer is not a family member of any one of the authors.

The reviewer is not in the same research team of the authors.

The reviewer was not co-authored with the authors in the past three years.

There exist any other circumstances that may affect to make fair review comments.

We provide the following types of reward to the reviewers:

1. A copy of the digital journal of the current year (under request);

2. Certificates of Recognition (under request)

3. "Outstanding reviewer certificate" will be awarded to excellent reviewers;

4. Online reviewer list and the reviewer list in JMS homepage and in the digital journal of the last issue of current year.

Sincerely,

Journal of Mountain Science

Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences

P.O.Box 417

No.16,South Sect.2, the 1st Ring Road (Yihuanlu)

Chengdu 610041, China

Tel:028-85252044

E-mail: jms@imde.ac.cn

QQ: 1540631665

QQ Group for authors: 232951752 (Journal of Mountain Science)

http://jms.imde.ac.cn

http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/journal/11629

http://mall.cnki.net/magazine/magadetail/SDKB201701.htm

---------------------------------------- 

About the Journal

The Journal of Mountain Science（JMS）, an international English journal on mountain sciences, was founded in 2004 and has been included in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) since 2007. The SCI impact factor of JMS is 2.017(Source: JCR, 2020). JMS is supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), sponsored by the Chengdu Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment (CAS), published by Science Press China, and exclusively distributed by Springer outside Mainland China. JMS is devoted to research on mountains and their surrounding lowlands - ecoregions of particular global importance, with a particular emphasis on the important highlands/ mountains.

----------------------------------

About Open Access

Journal of Mountain Science is a hybrid OA journal.

Authors (corresponding author) from about 2000 institutions in Austria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Italy, India (only Manipal), Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Qatar, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom can have your papers published in Open Access at no cost if your institutions are on the list of OA publication compact with Springer. You can check the Compact Institution List (Free OA publication) attached in this letter.

https://www.springer.com/gp/open-access/springer-open-choice/springer-compact

For authors from other countries or institutions not in the above mentioned list, if you would like to choose to have your articles published in open access, the APC is as follows, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable: ￡1890.00/$2780.00/