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Peer-Review Policy

Updated: 8   May  2021

Initial Evaluation

Initially, technical screening of the submitted manuscript is carried out, which results in one of the following decisions: 

  • If a submission does not adhere to the submission guidelines, or if it is lacking information that limits judgment of the validity or suitability of the work for consideration, it will be returned to the author(s) for correction (re-submission).
  • If a submission is based on the Journal guidelines and has no technical issues, it will be sent to the Editor-in-Chief to review the paper. 
  • If a submission is judged not to be "of broad interest and significance" or not in line with the aim and scope of the journal, it will be rejected without further processing.
  • Papers will only be sent to peer-review if the Editor-in-Chief determines that the paper meets the appropriate quality and relevance requirements.
  • Initial evaluation takes no more than a week from the submission date.

Double-Blind Peer-Review 

The journal ensures that a double-blind peer-review of all submissions is performed in all stages of review process:

  • A submission is reviewed by at least two external reviewers, who are experts in the field of the manuscript.
  • The peer-reviewers are assigned by the Editor-in-Chief or an associate editor. 
  • The peer-reviewers are required to declare their competing interests regarding the submission they are invited to review.
  • Based on the comments of the reviewers on the submission, the Editor-in-Chief will send a decision letter to the author(s), which will be one of the following: rejected; resubmit (Major or Minor revision); accepted.
  • The revised submissions are also sent for peer-review, and the reviewers will check the revisions on another review round. 

The peer-review process may take 4 to 6 weeks to complete. We ask our reviewers to send their comments in a timely manner so that we can handle submissions appropriately. 

Language Editing 

Submissions accepted for publication by the Editor-in-Chief are sent to the language editor, who works with the author(s) to polish the paper. 

Proofreading is required for all submissions.  At first, all papers are published online (e-publish). This stage is usually completed within 1 to 2 weeks based on the volume of the editing required and the time it takes for the author(s) to review their edited paper.