Right to use the label
The peer-review label is a trademark registered by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV). It indicates that a publication has undergone peer review in accordance with the internationally recognised principles of scholarly quality assurance and research integrity.
Publishers engaged in regular scholarly publishing activities in Finland may apply for the right to use the label. To be granted the right of use, the publisher must commit to complying with the terms and conditions for using the peer-review label.
A publisher granted the right to use the label must:
- describe its peer-review practices on the publication channel’s website,
- state its commitment to complying with the terms and conditions for using the peer-review label,
- use the label in accordance with the instructions.
TSV may withdraw the right of use if the terms and conditions are violated.
Requirements for the peer-review process
Use of the peer-review label requires the publication’s peer-review process to meet the requirements described below. The requirements concern reviewers, the review process, the aspects assessed and compliance with research integrity.
Conducting peer review
The peer-review label may be used for publications whose peer-review process meets the following requirements:
- The manuscript is reviewed by at least two experts who are not members of the editorial team and independent of the work being reviewed.
- The reviewers are researchers holding a doctoral degree or other experts in their field.
- The review may be conducted either anonymously or openly.
Scope of the review
In accordance with the standards of the relevant discipline, the peer review assesses aspects including:
- the scholarly quality of the research
- whether the research design or research question is well founded
- the reliability of how the research was conducted
- the originality and novelty of the results in relation to previous research.
The publisher sends the reviewers’ reports to the author of the manuscript.
Research integrity
Publishers granted the right to use the label must adhere to and promote, in their publishing activities, the principles set out in the peer-review guidelines of the Finnish Association for Scholarly Publishing and the Finnish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity issued by the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK.
Peer-review guidelines issued by the Finnish Association for Scholarly Publishing
The Finnish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity issued by the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK
Documentation of the peer-review process
The publisher must document the peer-review process for all manuscripts accepted for peer review.
The documentation may be kept in hard copy, electronically or in an editorial management system such as Journal.fi. Information stored in an editorial management system is considered sufficient documentation if it contains the key information and documents relating to the peer-review process.
At a minimum, the following information must be retained:
- the date on which the manuscript was received
- the names of the authors
- the title of the manuscript
- the names of the reviewers
- the reviewers’ reports
- publication decisions and the dates of those decisions.
The information must be retained for at least five years. Permanent retention is recommended wherever possible.
The stored information is not public. However, the publisher must provide TSV or the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK with peer-review documents relating to an individual publication upon request.
Data protection
The publisher is responsible for ensuring that the peer-review process complies with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. The publisher’s privacy notice must describe the documentation of the peer-review process. For publishers using the Journal.fi service, the Journal.fi privacy notice fulfils this requirement.
Using the label in publications
A publisher granted the right of use may use the label to identify peer-reviewed books and articles.
The following principles must be observed:
- the label may only be used in publications issued after the right of use has been granted.
- the label may not be applied retrospectively to publications issued before the right to use the label was granted.
- the label must unambiguously indicate which publications or individual contributions have been peer reviewed.
- if the entire work has been peer reviewed, the label may be applied to the work as a whole.
- if the work contains both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed texts, the label may only be applied to the peer-reviewed texts.
- separate instructions on displaying the label must be followed.
Read the instructions
Exception concerning doctoral dissertations
The peer-review label may not be used for doctoral dissertations published in their original form, whether before or after the public defence.
If a new work is produced based on a doctoral dissertation, the label may be used. In this case, the work must be reviewed by two independent experts. If the publisher has access to the dissertation examiners' reports and a detailed report by the author on the revisions made, the work may be reviewed by a single peer reviewer.