Peer Review Procedure

To maintain the integrity and high standards of AFS Transactions, all papers offered to AFS must pass a peer review system of three reviewers to ensure that only original papers of the highest quality are presented at the AFS Metalcasting Congress and published in Transactions.

The AFS Division Council structure includes national, technical and management committees with specialty focus on most metalcasting related subject areas. Their members serve as subject matter experts for the review of submitted papers. The potential reviewers include foundry shop floor, management, engineering and technical personnel, and subject matter specialists from the foundry equipment and supply industry as well as university and academic metalcasting specialists. Reviewers are pre-qualified and listed by metalcasting specialty and knowledge.

Based on the subject matter of the paper, all submitted papers are assigned to a program and papers committee that coordinates the review and paper selection process. Three reviewers specializing in the topic and subject of the papers are chosen for each paper and serve as peer review by reading and evaluating the quality and technical merit of the assigned paper. To assure proper technical review, reviewers are asked to return any papers on subjects in which that they do not have expertise or experience, that they are not qualified to review or that they cannot fairly evaluate due to a conflict of interest or competitive concerns. These returned papers are assigned to an alternative reviewer.

When evaluating the technical and scientific merit, reviewers are asked to evaluate the papers based on the data, experimentation and references provided, not simply on personal opinion. A reviewer may not necessarily agree with the conclusions of the authors, but if there seems to be ample and valid supporting data, the paper can be accepted. If a reviewer does not agree with the conclusions of the authors, and can cite other works that contradict the conclusions, he will voice those opinions and concerns in comments at the end of the review form.