Peer Review Process

The contributions received by the Associate Editors which in the opinion of Editor-in-Chief fulfil basic requirements regarding their content and form are further subject to double blind review by two independent scholars. The purpose of peer review is to assist the Editor-in-Chief (or together with Guest Editor(s), further just “Editor”), Associate Editors and Editorial Board in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communication with the author it may also assist the author in improving the paper. Managing editor(s) assist Editor(s) throughout the peer review process as well as with editorial process and communication with the publisher.

The choice of reviewers is at the Editors’ discretion. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors’ own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.

Editor sends an anonymized contribution to the chosen reviewer. The reviewer suggests if the contribution should be published or not, with or without major or minor changes. The identity of the author also remains unknown to the reviewers before, during and after the review.

All of the reviewers of a paper act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor may assign additional reviewers.

During the review process the Editor may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are 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 Editor shall ensure reasonable quality control for the 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 high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

Review process takes usually six weeks, but can exceed this period in specific cases.