Peer review procedures
1. The Executive Secretary of the Editorial Board, along with the leading specialist of the Technical Committee, registers the manuscripts of articles received by the Editorial Board, conducts their initial examination within 5 days and transfers the manuscripts that receive positive conclusions based on the initial examination to the Editor-in-chief. Manuscripts that receive negative conclusions are returned to the authors with the necessary explanations.
2. During the initial examination, the Executive Secretary evaluates:
- Compliance of the article with the thematic areas of the Journal
- Compliance with the requirements for the structure, layout and submission of articles published in the Journal
- Proportion of originality and the presence of scientifically incorrect borrowing (use of results belonging to other persons, without reference to the author and source)
3. The Editor-in-chief, along with the Executive Secretary and thematic editors, arranges the examination of articles, appoints two reviewers and transfers the article manuscripts to them through the leading specialist of the technical committee.
4. Reviewers are specialists in the subject matter of the article who hold a candidate or doctoral degree. In their cover letter, authors may indicate names of those expert-specialists who shall not act as reviewers for their manuscript due to a conflict of interests. This information is confidential and considered by the Editorial Board during the arrangement of peer review.
5. The peer review is held in blind manner. The identity of author(s) is hidden from reviewers.
6. The peer review report submitted to the Editorial Board shall:
- reveal the level of analysis of sources, relevance, significance, scientific-and-theoretical, methodological, and practical value of a scientific article
- contain an assessment of the scientific results presented in the article, their reliability, the validity of the findings, and compliance with the requirements for layout
- contain a conclusion with clear statement explaining all the reasons for which the manuscript deserves to be accepted/rejected, or to be revised
The peer review report shall be signed by the reviewer and sealed by the institution where he/she works.
7. The reviewer reads the article and provides critique of scientific content and layout of the manuscript within 10 business days. The reviewer then submits all the documents, including the peer review report, to the Executive Secretary through the leading specialist of the Technical Committee. The peer review report is sent by both email and as a hard copy.
8. The Executive Secretary, along with the leading specialist of the Technical Committee, registers peer review reports and sends them, together with the article manuscripts, to a thematic editor.
9. Thematic boards hold meetings where they further read and discuss the manuscript considering the peer review reports received, and then they make decision whether to accept the manuscript for publication in the Journal. The thematic board has the right to request additional information from authors, such as an author's note on the reviewer's comments, and hold the review until the reply is received.
10. A thematic editor presents the manuscript at a manuscript meeting where the Editorial Board makes the final decision which includes one of the following: acceptance, request for revision, additional review, or rejection.
11. The rejected manuscripts are not returned.
12. If revision of the article manuscript is necessary, the authors are provided with the relevant reviews. The authors must make the necessary edits to the manuscript within 14 business days, prepare an author's note on the elimination of the reviewer's comments (in which they provide reasons for the elimination or non-elimination of the comments) and submit to the editors an updated manuscript with the author's note as specified above. After this, the updated manuscript of the article, together with the author's note, is once again sent to the reviewer who indicated the need for revision, for another review.
13. The editors reserve the right to make editorial changes and cuts in the text and abstract, not distorting the main content of the paper.