CONTENTS

1. Submission and Peer Review Process
2. Article Types
3. After Acceptance
4. Appendix

1. Submission and Peer Review Process

Once the submission materials have been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines, manuscripts should be submitted online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/river.

For help with submissions, please contact: [email protected] 

This journal does not charge submission fees.

Article Preparation Support

Wiley Editing Services offers expert help with English Language Editing, as well as translation, manuscript formatting, figure illustration, figure formatting, and graphical abstract design – so you can submit your manuscript with confidence.

Also, check out our resources for Preparing Your Article for general guidance about writing and preparing your manuscript.

Free format submission

River now offers Free Format submission for a simplified and streamlined submission process.

Before you submit, you will need:

• Your manuscript: this should be an editable file including text, figures, and tables, or separate files—whichever you prefer. All required sections should be contained in your manuscript, including abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. Figures and tables should have legends. Figures should be uploaded in the highest resolution possible. References may be submitted in any style or format, as long as it is consistent throughout the manuscript. Supporting information should be submitted in separate files. If the manuscript, figures or tables are difficult for you to read, they will also be difficult for the editors and reviewers, and the editorial office will send it back to you for revision. Your manuscript may also be sent back to you for revision if the quality of English language is poor.
• An ORCID ID, freely available at https://orcid.org. (Why is this important? Your article, if accepted and published, will be attached to your ORCID profile. Institutions and funders are increasingly requiring authors to have ORCID IDs.)
• The title page of the manuscript, including:
  • Your co-author details, including affiliation and email address. (Why is this important? We need to keep all co-authors informed of the outcome of the peer review process.)
  • Statements relating to our ethics and integrity policies, which may include any of the following (Why are these important? We need to uphold rigorous ethical standards for the research we consider for publication):
    • data availability statement
    • funding statement
    • conflict of interest disclosure
    • ethics approval statement
    • patient consent statement
    • permission to reproduce material from other sources
    • clinical trial registration

To submit, login at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/river and create a new submission. Follow the submission steps as required and submit the manuscript.

Open Access

This journal is an open access journal. All articles published by River are fully open access where they are immediately freely available to read, download and share. Please note: Article Publication Charges (APCs) are currently waived. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.

Preprint policy:

Please find the Wiley preprint policy here.

This journal accepts articles previously published on preprint servers.

River will consider for review articles previously available as preprints. Authors are requested to update any pre-publication versions with a link to the final published article. Authors may also post the final published version of the article immediately after publication.

Data Sharing and Data Availability

This journal expects authors to share the data by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Please Review Wiley’s Data Sharing policy where you will be able to see and select the data availability statement that is right for your submission.

All accepted manuscripts may choose to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data.

Data Citation

Please review Wiley’s Data Citation policy.

Data Protection

By submitting a manuscript to or reviewing for this publication, your name, email address, and affiliation, and other contact details the publication might require, will be used for the regular operations of the publication. The publication and the publisher recognize the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of these services, and have practices in place to ensure that steps are taken to maintain the security, integrity, and privacy of the personal data collected and processed. Please review Wiley’s Data Protection Policy to learn more.

Funding

You should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. You are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature.

Authorship

All listed authors should have contributed to the manuscript substantially and have agreed to the final submitted version. Review editorial standards and scroll down for a description of authorship criteria.

ORCID

The ORCID iD is a unique and persistent identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher – by connecting you with your research contributions and affiliations. Free to use and register for, an ORCID iD increases the discoverability of your research outputs, and helps alleviate mistaken identity. You have full control of your ORCID record, and can control what information is connected and how it is shared.

As part of our commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, River requires the submitting author (only) to provide an ORCID iD when submitting their manuscript. Please refer to Wiley’s resources on ORCID.

Reproduction of Copyright Material

If excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, credit must be shown in the contribution. It is your responsibility to also obtain written permission for reproduction from the copyright owners. For more information visit Wiley’s Copyright Terms & Conditions FAQ.

The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce the material "in print and other media" from the publisher of the original source, and for supplying Wiley with that permission upon submission.

Title Page 

The title page should contain: 

1. A brief informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations (see Wiley's best practice SEO tips);
2. A short running title of less than 40 characters;
3. The full names of the authors;
4. The author's institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
5. Acknowledgments. 

Main Text File

The main text file should be in Word and include:

• A short informative title containing the major key words. The title should not contain abbreviations
• The full names of the authors with institutional affiliations where the work was conducted, with a footnote for the author’s present address if different from where the work was conducted;
• Acknowledgments;
• Abstract unstructured
• Up to seven keywords;
• Main body: formatted as introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion, conclusion
• References;
• Tables (each table complete with title and footnotes);
• Figure legends: Figure legends must be added beneath each individual image during upload AND supplied as a complete list in the text. Figures should be uploaded as separate files (see below).

Reference Style

This journal uses APA reference style. Review your reference style guidelines prior to submission.

As the journal offers Free Format submission, however, this is for information only and you do not need to format the references in your article. This will instead be taken care of by the typesetter.

Figures and Supporting Information

Figures, supporting information, and appendices should be supplied as separate files. You should review the basic figure requirements for manuscripts for peer review, as well as the more detailed post-acceptance figure requirements. View Wiley’s FAQs on supporting information.

Peer Review

This journal operates under a single-blind peer review model. Papers will only be sent to review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.

In-house submissions, i.e. papers authored by Editors or Editorial Board members of the title, will be sent to Editors unaffiliated with the author or institution and monitored carefully to ensure there is no peer review bias. Wiley's policy on the confidentiality of the review process is available here.

Special issues

All the Special Issue papers will go through the same peer review process procedure as the regular papers to ensure the quality of the special issue papers. 
The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the content of the entire journal, including all special issues, which fall within the scope of the journal
Special issue articles have the same editorial oversight as regular papers, including external peer review, and be clearly labelled
Guest editors’ credentials are checked and approved by the Editorial Office
The Editor-in-Chief or dedicated board members oversee the guest editors
Papers submitted to a special issue by the guest editor(s) will be handled under an independent review process 

Refer and Transfer Program

Wiley believes that no valuable research should go unshared. This journal participates in Wiley’s Refer & Transfer program. If your manuscript is not accepted, you may receive a recommendation to transfer your manuscript to another suitable Wiley journal, either through a referral from the journal’s editor or through our Transfer Desk Assistant.

Guidelines on Publishing and Research Ethics in Journal Articles

The journal requires that you include in the manuscript details IRB approvals, ethical treatment of human and animal research participants, and gathering of informed consent, as appropriate. You will be expected to declare all conflicts of interest, or none, on submission. Please review Wiley’s policies surrounding human studies, animal studies, clinical trial registration, biosecurity, and research reporting guidelines.

This journal follows the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and handles cases of research and publication misconduct accordingly (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

This journal uses iThenticate’s CrossCheck software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Read Wiley’s Top 10 Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors and Wiley’s Publication Ethics Guidelines.

Author Contributions

For all articles, the journal mandates the CRediT (Contribution Roles Taxonomy)—more information is available on our Author Services site.

2. Article Types

3. After Acceptance

First Look

After your paper is accepted, your files will be assessed by the editorial office to ensure they are ready for production. You may be contacted if any updates or final files are required. Otherwise, your paper will be sent to the production team.

Wiley Author Services

When an accepted article is received by Wiley’s production team, the corresponding author will receive an email asking them to login or register with Wiley Author Services. You will be asked to sign a publication license at this point. Please note: Article Publication Charges (APCs) are currently waived. For more information on this journal’s APCs, please see the Open Access page.

Copyright & Licensing

River is an Open Access journal: authors of accepted papers pay an Article Publication Charge and their papers are published under a Creative Commons license. The Article Publication Charge is waived for accepted manuscripts from 2022-2024. The Article Publication Charge will be collected from 2025 onwards.  This journal uses the CC-BY Creative Commons License. Note that certain funders mandate a particular type of CC license be used.

Please review Wiley’s guidelines on sharing your research here. The submitted version of the manuscript, the accepted version, and the published version (Version of Record) can all be deposited on an institutional or other repository of the author's choice without embargo.

When the article is published online:

• The author receives an email alert (if requested).
• The link to the published article can be shared through social media.
• The author will have free access to the paper (after accepting the Terms & Conditions of use, they can view the article).

Proofs

Authors will receive an e-mail notification with a link and instructions for accessing HTML page proofs online. Authors should also make sure that any renumbered tables, figures, or references match text citations and that figure legends correspond with text citations and actual figures. Proofs must be returned within 48 hours of receipt of the email.

Early View

The journal offers rapid publication via Wiley’s Early View service. Early View (Online Version of Record) articles are published on Wiley Online Library before inclusion in an issue. Note there may be a delay after corrections are received before your article appears online, as Editors also need to review proofs. Once your article is published on Early View no further changes to your article are possible. Your Early View article is fully citable and carries an online publication date and DOI for citations.

Article Promotion Support

Wiley Editing Services offers professional video, design, and writing services to create shareable video abstracts, infographics, conference posters, lay summaries, and research news stories for your research – so you can help your research get the attention it deserves.

Author Name Change Policy

In cases where authors wish to change their name following publication, Wiley will update and republish the paper and redeliver the updated metadata to indexing services. Our editorial and production teams will use discretion in recognizing that name changes may be of a sensitive and private nature for various reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Accordingly, to protect the author’s privacy, we will not publish a correction notice to the paper, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.

Correction to authorship

In accordance with Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics and the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidance, River will allow authors to correct authorship on a submitted, accepted, or published article if a valid reason exists to do so. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. To request a change to the author list, please complete the Request for Changes to a Journal Article Author List Form and contact either the journal’s editorial or production office, depending on the status of the article. Authorship changes will not be considered without a fully completed Author Change form. [Correcting the authorship is different from changing an author’s name; the relevant policy for that can be found in Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines under “Author name changes after publication.”]

4. Appendix

Open Research Badges

This journal is part of Wiley’s Open Research Badges program.