Peer Review Process

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

Editor in Chief will assign the manuscript to Managing Editor for further handling. The Managing Editor will request at least two scientists to review the research article manuscript. All manuscripts are subject to double-blind peer-review, the reviewer identities are concealed from the authors, throughout the review process to meet standards of academic excellence.

Detailed information about the flow for the manuscript submission (author) to the acceptance by the editor is shown in the following figure.

In short, the steps are:

  1. Manuscript Submission (by author) (route 1)
  2. Manuscript Check and Selection (by manager and editors) (route 2). Editors have a right to directly accept, reject, or review. Prior to further processing steps, a plagiarism check using Turnitin is applied for each manuscript.
  3. Manuscript Reviewing Process (by reviewers) (route 3-4)
  4. Notification of Manuscript Acceptance, Revision, or Rejection (by editor to author based on reviewers comments) (route 5)
  5. Paper Revision (by author)
  6. Revision Submission based on Reviewer Suggestion (by author) with the similar flow to point number 1. (route 1)
  7. If the reviewer seems to be satisfied with the revision, notification for acceptance (by editor). (route 6)
  8. Galley proof and publishing process (route 7 and 8)

The steps point number 1 to 5 are considered as 1 round of the peer-reviewing process (see the grey area in the figure). The editor or editorial board considers the feedback provided by the peer reviewers and arrives at a decision. The following are the most common decisions:

  1. Accepted, as it is. The journal will publish the paper in its original form;
  2. Accepted by Minor Revisions, the journal will publish the paper and ask the author to make small corrections (let authors revise within the stipulated time);
  3. Accepted by Major Revisions, the journal will publish the paper provided the authors make the changes suggested by the reviewers and/or editors (let authors revise with stipulated time);
  4. Resubmit (conditional rejection), the journal is willing to reconsider the paper in another round of decision-making after the authors make major changes;
  5. Rejected (outright rejection), the journal will not publish the paper or reconsider it even if the authors make major revisions.