Submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assist the editor-in-chief and editorial board in making editorial decisions. Through editorial communications with the author, this process may also assist the author in improving the paper. Every submitted article is evaluated by two reviewers within three months of the date of submission. In case the reviewer is not able to complete the process, an alternative reviewer will be involved, which can lead to delays in the review period. Reviewers do not receive honoraria.
The choice of reviewers is at the editor-in-chief’s discretion. Reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.
In the main review phase, the editor-in-chief sends submitted papers to two experts in the field. The evaluation form for reviewers contains a checklist to help referees cover all aspects that can decide the fate of a submission. In the final section of the evaluation form, reviewers must include observations and suggestions aimed at improving the submitted manuscript; these are sent to authors, without the names of the reviewers. All the reviewers of a manuscript remain anonymous to the authors before, during, and after the evaluation process, and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.
The factors that are considered in review are relevance, soundness, significance, originality, readability, and language.
The three possible outcomes of review include acceptance, acceptance with revisions, or rejection. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted. Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
All the reviewers of a paper act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers (acceptance/rejection) are not the same, the editor-in-chief may assign additional reviewers.
During the review process, the editor-in-chief may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.
The editorial staff shall ensure reasonable quality control of reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and of a high academic standard. When there is any doubt about the objectivity or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.
