SUMMARY
GeoArabia’s Referees provide critical advice to the Editors on whether a submitted paper is important, accurate and relevant to the Middle East petroleum geosciences. Published papers should be either of broad interest (for example: multidisciplinary case studies in exploration and reservoir management), or specialized (for example: a single discipline like biostratigraphy, geochemistry, seismic processing, etc.). Referees should write a General Report (one page) and a detailed Specific Report (consisting of several pages) to the Editor-in-Chief, in a period of four weeks.

The General Report should be constructive, highlight the merits of the paper, and recommend: (1) Accept-with-Suggestions; (2) Accept-with-Conditions; or (3) Reject. The Specific Report consists of numbered bullet sentences and/or phrases that are indexed to the original manuscript (to be returned). The numbered bullets should explain how the information (text and figures) could be improved.

REFEREEING PROCESS
Upon receiving an original manuscript, GeoArabia contacts two Referees to review the manuscript. The manuscripts are usually reviewed within a period of four weeks by the Referees. Once the reviews are received by GeoArabia, the Editor-in-Chief carefully evaluates the recommendations of the reviewers. He informs the Author about the status of the manuscript and forwards the Referees comments, without revealing the identity of the Referees. Based on the recommendations of the Referees of the original manuscript and/or the implementation of their comments in the revised manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief will accept the manuscript for publication.

ACCEPT-WITH-SUGGESTIONS
Referees should recommend Accept-with-Suggestions when:

manuscript is original, important, and relevant to the Middle East petroleum geosciences
data and methods accurately support the conclusions and abstract
introduction lays the groundwork for the paper
main text and discussion are well written, clear and concise, and
figures and tables are accurate and effectively designed.

The Referee should indicate that the suggested changes should be adopted at the discretion of GeoArabia.

ACCEPT-WITH-CONDITIONS
Referees should recommend Accept-with-Conditions when the manuscript fails to meet the Accept-with-Suggestions category, and should explain how:

the manuscript could be restructured so as to read more clearly
the data and methods should be better documented
the abstract, discussion and conclusions made more informative
figures better designed to meet minimum drafting standards
figure captions lengthened so that they are self-explanatory, and
figures and tables reordered more logically and in consecutive order.

The Referees should indicate that they consider their recommendations as conditions. In these cases, GeoArabia’s Editors may invite the same or other Referees to once again referee these manuscripts after they are revised by the Authors.

ACCEPT OR REJECT
The Editor-in-Chief, in consultation with the Executive Editor and involved members of the Editorial Board, will consider all aspects of the Referee’s reports. Where reasonable conditions are recommended by a Referee, GeoArabia’s Editors will encourage the Authors to meet these requirements. The Editor-in-Chief will exercise the final decision in accepting a paper for publication.

ANONYMITY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All General and Specific Reports are sent to the Primary Author without revealing the identity of the Referee. Referees should provide their biographies and photographs so that they can be included in the Collective Acknowledgement in the end-of-year issue. GeoArabia does not encourage direct contacts regarding reviews between Referees and Authors.

ATTITUDE
Referees should have a positive, impartial and tactful attitude. They should suggest new insights and improvements, acknowledge good points, and avoid negative comments. They should not make personal attacks (for example: “the Author is incompetent”), nor sarcastic and dogmatic comments (for example: “this is nonsense!” or “this is untrue!”).

DEADLINE: 4 WEEKS
GeoArabia requests that Referees complete their reports within 4 weeks. All reports should be sent by courier or registered mail. Submission of reviews by e-mail is not encouraged.

ENGLISH EDITING
Referees can greatly help GeoArabia by editing the English wherever possible. Referees can note misspellings and rephrase short text in the margins of the manuscript. In the Specific Report they can provide a bullet that shows how a complete sentence or paragraph can be better phrased. The bullet should be numbered in the left margin of the manuscript and the Specific Report.

In the text, figures and figure captions, Referees can check if all place names, formation names, etc. are shown and spelled consistently.

ETHICS AND REFERENCES
Manuscripts that contain published information should cite the relevant references. Referees should check if all the necessary references are consistently cited in the text, figure captions, tables, and the Reference List. Information from unpublished company reports or similar confidential material should be released by the appropriate authorities (Company Management and/or Ministry Officials). Information in university theses, conference proceedings (whether printed, or on a CD/website) and technical comments (whether verbal or written) should be referenced.

Sending a manuscript to more than one publisher at the same time is unacceptable. Referees who learn of it should immediately inform the Editor-in-Chief.

Referees should not copy, discuss, or cite an unpublished manuscript, or use the work for their own research without the permission of the Editor-in-Chief and Author.

EXPERTISE
GeoArabia’s Referees are selected because of their proven knowledge of the subject matter of the manuscript. Before sending the manuscript the Referees are individually contacted to determine if they are prepared to review the manuscript in a four-week period. Every submitted manuscript is refereed by at least two experts.

REFEREE’S GENERAL REPORT
The Referee’s General Report should write a brief summary of the paper explaining why it should be accepted or not. If certain recommendations are considered critical it should highlight them. It should consider whether the manuscript should be re-organized or rewritten (particularly where the English is weak). It should indicate any oversight in proper crediting for professional help and use of borrowed materials, data, or concepts. It should indicate if the overall quality of the figures is unacceptable; for example: poor design (size, color, perspective, detail, etc.), difficult to understand (weak captions, incomplete legends, etc.) or inaccurate (no coordinates, scales, etc.).

REFEREE’S SPECIFIC REPORT
Referees must read the paper critically and very carefully. They should place consecutive numbers in the manuscript’s left margin, in figure captions and figures. They should use black or blue ink (pencil and other colors do not photocopy legibly). For each number they should type a short phrase or sentence in the Specific Report indicating how this word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, table, figure caption or figure can be improved. These comments should be very specific and easy to adopt. For example, a constructive bullet could indicate an important reference that should be included and cite its full details.

For example, if the Title can be more concise and informative, place a number “1” to the left of the manuscript’s Title, the Specific Report should then suggest an alternative to (1). The Report should next proceed to the Abstract and so forth. Spare no bullets!

Referees should not write lengthy comments in the margins or on back of the manuscript. These are very difficult to read and photocopy. They are also very difficult to refer to during the revision and in discussions between the Author and Editors.