Submission, Review, & Publication Processes
Submission Process
All submissions to MRA must be made electronically via the eJournalPress (eJP) online submission and peer review system. (E-mailed submissions will not be accepted.) First-time users must create an Author account.
Review Process
All manuscripts are peer reviewed and considered to be confidential. Impersonation of another individual during the review process is considered serious misconduct.
To facilitate the review, communication from the relevant database confirming public data availability must be included with the initial submission as a Data Release Email file. Copies of in-press and submitted manuscripts that are important for judgment of the present manuscript should be included as related manuscript files.
When a manuscript is submitted to the journal, it is given a control number (e.g., MRA00123-18) and assigned to one of the editors. (Always refer to this control number in communications with the editor and the Journals Department.) From there it is assigned to at least one independent expert for peer review. A single-blind review, where authors' identities are known to reviewers, is applied. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to inform the coauthors of the manuscript's status throughout the submission, review, and publication processes. The reviewers operate under strict guidelines set forth in "Guidelines for Reviewers" and are expected to complete their reviews expeditiously.
The corresponding author is notified, generally within 6 to 8 weeks after submission, of the editor’s decision to accept, reject, or require modification. When modification is requested, the corresponding author must either submit the modified version within 2 months or withdraw the manuscript. A point-by-point response to the reviews must be uploaded as a separate Revision Response file, and a compare copy of the manuscript should be included as a Related Manuscript File if the editor requested one.
Manuscripts that have been rejected with the option to resubmit, or withdrawn after being returned for modification, may be resubmitted to the same ASM journal if the major criticisms have been addressed. Manuscripts rejected with the option to resubmit may be resubmitted only once unless permission has been obtained from the original editor or from the editor in chief.
The cover letter of every resubmitted manuscript must state that the manuscript is a resubmission, and the former manuscript control number must be provided. A point-by-point response to the review(s) must be uploaded as a Revision Response file, and a copy of the revised manuscript tracking the changes must be included as a Related Manuscript File. Manuscripts resubmitted to the same journal are normally handled by the original editor.
Notification of Acceptance
When the editor has decided that a manuscript is acceptable for publication, the author and the Journals Department are notified. The text files undergo an automated preediting, cleanup, and tagging process specific to the particular article type. If all files have been prepared according to the criteria set forth in these Instructions and those in the eJP online manuscript submission system, the acceptance procedure will be completed successfully. If there are problems that would cause extensive corrections to be made at the copyediting stage or if the files are not acceptable for production, ASM Journals staff will contact the corresponding author. Once all the material intended for publication has been determined to be adequate, the manuscript is copyedited and prepared for publication.
Publication Schedule
Announcements are published in weekly issues (50 issues per year). The articles from issues published in the preceding weeks are moved into the MRA archive.
Page Proofs
The corresponding author will be provided access to the page proofs for corrections. All author queries must be answered, and any changes related to the queries, as well as any additional changes, must also be marked on the proofs. Note that the copy editor does not query at every instance where a change has been made. Queries are written only to request necessary information or clarification of an unclear passage or to draw attention to edits that may have altered the sense. It is the author's responsibility to read the entire text, not just items queried. Corrections must be made within two business days after notification of availability.
The proof stage is not the time to make extensive corrections, additions, or deletions.
Important new information that has become available between acceptance of the manuscript and receipt of the proofs may be inserted as an addendum in proof with the permission of the editor. If references to unpublished data or personal communications are added, it is expected that written assurance granting permission for the citation will be included. Limit changes to correction of spelling errors, incorrect data, and grammatical errors and updated information for references to articles that have been submitted or are in press. If URLs have been provided in the article, recheck the sites to ensure that the addresses are still accurate and the material that you expect the reader to find is indeed there.
Questions about proofs should be directed to Cenveo (Mary O'Brien, e-mail: Mary.Obrien@cenveo.com; telephone: 410-694-4170).
Funding Agency Repositories
ASM allows MRA authors whose work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funding agencies that have public access requirements (e.g., the Wellcome Trust) to post their accepted manuscripts in publicly accessible electronic repositories maintained by those funding agencies. If a funding agency does not itself maintain such a site, then ASM allows the author to fulfill that requirement by depositing the article in an appropriate institutional or subject-based open repository established by a government or noncommercial entity. ASM requests that when submitting an accepted manuscript to PMC or a similar public access site, the author specify that the posting release date for the manuscript be no earlier than the date of publication on the MRA website and that a link to the published paper on the journal website be provided.