Referees must be registered to JSTAT. Registration gives access to your personal pages for all the roles you play in the journal (author, referee, editor). There you can perform all the actions connected with the stages in the editorial procedure. Registration is easy and free of charge. To register you have to fill in the form of the JSTAT home page with the following data:

• Login name
• Password
• First Name
• Last Name
• E-mail
• Institution

If you cannot remember your registration data, please do not register again, rather click on "automatic password recovery" on the JSTAT home page. You can update your profile and change login name and password by clicking on "modify my personal data".

The checkbox "Remember my login name on this computer" allows a cookie to be sent to your computer, which saves you from logging in every time, unless you click on the "logout" button.

Sometimes, when an editor wants to appoint as referee someone who is not a registered user, (s)he can register the new user. If you have been registered in this way, you will receive an e-mail with temporary login and password. After logging in you will be able to modify your personal data.

Communication tools are available in each page to communicate with the Journal Editorial Office. Please always use these tools instead of normal e-mail. These messages will be saved in the data-base and associated to the document they refer to, which is crucial for the efficiency of the editorial procedure.

For every submitted preprint the editor in charge of the editorial procedure can turn to one or more referees for an opinion. Referees and Editors are expected to follow the guidelines below:

On the basis of the referee report(s), the editor writes the final report and makes the decision on whether the submission is acceptable for publication. In reviewing preprints referees should tend to the standards of the JSTAT editorial policy.

As soon as a referee is selected by the editor, the JSTAT software automatically sends a notification via e-mail to the referee.

If a referee has never registered to the journal a JSTAT editor may want to register you for either of two reasons:

• in order to ask you to review a submission. In this case you will receive a system notification informing you that you have been registered to JSTAT and one telling you about the new submission (that you will find on the link "my Referee pages" on the JSTAT home page).
• in order to add you to his potential referees address book. In this case you will only receive one system notification informing you that you have been registered to JSTAT and the link "my Referee pages" will not display any submission.

In both cases we urge you to login to JSTAT and personalise your authentication data (username and password), from the link "modify my personal data".

The pending preprints in the referee pages are divided into sections displayed like an index:

• New submissions: newly submitted preprints that an editor has asked you to review.
• Revised preprints: submissions that have been reviewed, for which the editor requested a revision. The editor-in-charge would like to know your opinion on the resubmitted version.
• Preprints revised with a minor revision: preprints that have been reviewed, for which the editor requested a minor revision. The editor-in-charge would like to know your opinion on the resubmitted version.
• Appeals against rejection: preprints rejected by the editor, for which the author has sent an appeal. The editor decided to reconsider the preprint which is now assigned to you for a review.
• Preprints to be checked and reviewed again: preprints previously accepted for publication for which the author has requested changes in the proofreading stage that require the editor's approval. The editor has requested that the authors resubmit a revised version, which is now assigned to you for a review. The previous version of the preprint is available for comparison under the link "all versions".

When a preprint is assigned to you as a referee, you are kindly requested to accept or decline the assignment by using the appropriate bottons at the bottom of your referee pages for the preprint in question (i.e. JSTAT_001P_0104). This is to make sure you have read the editor's review request and to inform her/him whether you will be able to review the submission in the requested time frame.

The report must be prepared in a separate file (TeX/LaTeX, MS Word), according to the guidelines in how to write the report and then should be pasted into the appropriate form (clicking the "send report" tool on your pages) and finally uploded (button "send report"). Please remember not to sign the report: the editor-in-charge will know your identity from the system. A standard, editable message addressed to the editor is also available on your referee pages after you click the "send report" button. You can edit this message.

Furthermore, in the top part of the page there are two navigation bars. The top one provides access to the tool for modifying your personal data and to these instructions.

The bottom one leads to all archived contributions, under the tag "my reviews".

• My reviews these are all the articles which you have been asked to review. You can access all the versions of the preprint up to the one that you have been referee for. As far as published articles are concerned, you cannot see the final version, which is accessible on the public site to authorized users.

For each version you are enabled to see all the reports written by you and any other associated document that the editor-in-charge has enabled you to access (referee reports by other referees, cover letters, editor reports...).

To be considered for publication in JSTAT, contributions must contain significant new material, must be of high quality and scientific interest, must be written in good, scientific English, and must be on subject matter covered by the journal (please see the keywords).