Peer Review Process
Pre-desk review
All manuscripts received by the editorial office are checked by the executive editor regarding the purpose, subject, and policy of the journal. Manuscripts that do not meet the journal's subject matter and editorial policies or journal editorial standards are rejected for review. The editor's introduction and the block with information about corrections are not subject to review.
Manuscripts of articles that do not meet the journal's requirements for structure and design are returned to the authors for revision and resubmission. If the author has not sent a response to the editor's request within 30 calendar days, it is considered that the manuscript is not under review by the journal editorial office.
Manuscripts of articles in which, after checking for plagiarism in the Unicheck and/or iThenticate system, a significant percentage of textual borrowings are found, are returned to the authors for revision. If signs of plagiarism are detected, the article will be returned to the author without the right to resubmit this article.
After desk-review, the author's manuscript is submitted for peer-review (expert evaluation, external).
Peer-review (external reviewers)
All articles submitted for publication are subject to a double-blind review on the Open Journal System (OJS) platform by at least two external reviewers who are experts in the scientific field of the specific article.
Members of the editorial board recommend as reviewers persons who are experts in the scientific field of a specific article and have publications on the topic of the article. Members of the editorial board can also be reviewers.
Reviewers must adhere to international best peer review practices, including the Guidelines for Reviewers from the European Association of Science Editors, the Web of Science Academy, and the requirements of this publication.
Reviewers are required to notify the editor and/or editors of all possible conflicts of interest as soon as possible. They must also adhere to the principle of confidentiality when working with the manuscript of the article, in particular not to use and/or reproduce it in whole or in part anywhere, and not to disclose information about the editorial request for review.
The editors prefer articles with qualitative and/or quantitative data, although the journal publishes in-depth review articles.
During the preparation of the review, the reviewer must answer "yes", or "no, needs minor revision" or "no, needs significant revision" to the following questions (the question is specified in the template for the reviewer on the OJS platform):
Does the title of the article correspond to its content and purpose?
Does the abstract reflect the main content of the article and correspond to the IMRAD structure?
Are the key ideas of the article original, scientifically significant and interesting to the readership?
Are the main results of the article scientifically based and valid?
Does the article and its key parts comply with the structure of IMRAD and the technical requirements of the journal?
Are the tables, figures justified, appropriate and meet the requirements of the magazine?
Is the research methodology appropriate and properly substantiated?
Is the language of the article scientific, grammatically correct and understandable to the readership?
In the "Discussions" section, is knowledge of the relevant issues of the literature article demonstrated?
Are the conclusions clear and reasoned?
If the reviewers chose the answers “no, needs minor revision” or “no, needs significant revision” for any item, they should write reasoned comments and explain to the authors how to improve the article.
The editors have the right not to notify the author of those comments that contain a subjective assessment of the provisions of the manuscript, or insults, or do not meet the established requirements and criteria specified above.
Editors mediate all discussions between authors and reviewers during review of an article prior to publication. If agreement cannot be reached, the editors may invite additional reviewers.
The responsible editor has the right to return the review for revision if the reviewer did not comply with the requirements established by the Recommendations for reviewers (call for Recommendations), the review contains ambiguous remarks. In case of significant remarks to the reviewer, the editor has the right to exclude the reviewer from the list of persons to whom the publication addresses, and/or to inform about his actions at the place of his affiliation.
Reviewers do not carry out structural or stylistic editing of the manuscript, but, if necessary, report editorial problems of the authors and editors of the journal in the appropriate block of the review.
Reviewers' decisions can be as follows:
- to accept;
- accept after minor revisions (authors have 5 days to make minor changes in accordance with reviewers' comments);
- accept after substantial revisions (authors have two weeks to substantially revise the manuscript);
- reject with a proposal for resubmission (the manuscript will be rejected, and the authors will be asked to resubmit the article after substantial revision of the content, if, according to the reviewers, the article requires additional experiments, other empirical studies to confirm the conclusions);
reject (the article is rejected without the right to resubmit the same article if it has serious flaws and/or does not contain original scientific results).
If the article can be accepted subject to revision, it is returned to the author(s) along with the reviewers' comments and suggestions for improving the article and the editors' recommendations, if any.
The author resubmits a revised version of the article along with clear responses to the reviewers' comments. The author must highlight all changes in the text of the article.
The editor-in-chief directly evaluates the quality of changes or submits the article to reviewers for re-evaluation. In the case of a second round of review, the reviewer may be asked to evaluate a revised version of the manuscript in light of the reviewer's recommendations made during the first round of review.
Reviewers should clearly and reasonedly express their point of view, be polite and constructive in their recommendations.
The author must respond to all comments of the reviewer in accordance with the points of the review.
The total period of review cannot exceed 3 months from the date of receipt of the article by the reviewer.
The journal allows a maximum of two rounds of manuscript review.
The editors take into account the comments of the reviewers, but the final decision on the publication of the article is made by the editor-in-chief of the journal.
Authors’s appeal
Authors can appeal the rejection of publication. The procedure for such an appeal is described in the “Complaints and Appeals”.
