Internal Peer Review Process:
All submissions first go through an internal peer-review process. Each submission is reviewed by the editors who make an initial decision to send the manuscript out for peer-review or to reject without external review. Articles can be rejected at this stage for a variety of reasons such as: similarity with other published articles; the topic is outside of the scope of the journal; lack of academic standards requirements.
External Peer Review Process:
The articles accepted after the internal peer-review process are sent by the editorial secretary to the senior editors. They identify potential reviewers based on their expertise in the field, rigor and scientific methodology. This reviewers could be from journals boards or outside them, according to the possible knowledge of the topic of the submitted article, as resulted from the reviewers publications. The task of selecting the reviewers falls on the Senior editors responsibility.
Potential reviewers are contacted by the editorial secretary about their availability and interest in reviewing. Inquiries to reviewers are sent by e-mail, which include the manuscript abstract and the assignment deadline. When prospective reviewers agree to serve, they are permitted access to the manuscript and reviewing instructions, without however being permitted to know the author(s)’ name. The reviewers names are also unknown to manuscript author(s). Reviewers send their assessment to editorial secretary. The time frame for making their decision is maximum three weeks. Upon reviewers’ recommendations, the manuscript can be accepted, sent back to author for minor revisions, sent back to author to be resubmitted or rejected.
Review Form
Reviewer:
Paper title:
Author(s): Anonymous for the reviewer
Referee’s comments:
- Title of the article:Is it adequate for the content of the article?
- Abstract:Does it contain the essential information of the article? Is it complete?
- Keywords:Do they contain the essential information of the article? Are they complete?
- Diagrams, photos, archival documents, figures, tables and captions:Are they essential and clear?
- Scientific merit:rigor, accuracy and correctness
- Clarity of expression:communication of ideas; readability and discussion of concepts
- Discussion of the context of the work, and suitable referencing
- Originality:Is the work relevant and novel?
- Motivation:Does the problem considered have a sound motivation? All papers should clearly demonstrate the scientific interest of the results?
- Length:Is the content of the work of sufficient scientific interest to justify its length?
- Conclusion:Does the paper contain a carefully written conclusion, summarizing what has been learned and why it is interesting and useful?
- Other suggestions
The Editor’s Decision:
The Senior editors decide based on the reviews whether an article will be published or rejected. The authors will be notified by the editorial secretary upon this decision in due time, in order to know if the submitted article is accepted without or with necessary changes, or completely rejected.