Peer Review Process
Internal review (preliminary evaluation in the editorial office)
All manuscripts received by the editorial office are checked by the managing editor regarding the purpose, subject matter, and reactionary policy of the journal. Manuscripts that do not meet the subject matter and editorial policy of the journal or the journal's editorial standards are rejected for review. The editor's introductory speech, discussions, reviews, and materials from conferences, round tables, and meetings are not subject to review.
The managing editor appoints a responsible editor (in case of a conflict of interest - a "blind" editor who does not see the author and subsequently the external reviewers).
Manuscripts of articles that do not meet the journal's requirements for structure and design are returned to the authors by the responsible editor for revision and resubmission. If the author has not sent a response to the editor's request within 30 calendar days, the manuscript is considered not under consideration by the journal editorial board.
Manuscripts of articles in which signs of plagiarism are detected after checking are returned to the author without the right to resubmit this article.
The editorial office gives preference to articles with qualitative and/or quantitative data.
After all internal checks, the author's original article is submitted for external review (peer evaluation).
External review (evaluated by independent experts)
All articles submitted for publication are subject to 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.
The members of the editorial board recommend as reviewers individuals who are experts in the scientific field of the specific article and have publications on the topic of the article. Members of the editorial board, in addition to the editor-in-chief, deputy editor-in-chief, and responsible editor, may also be reviewers if they are not employees of the editorial office.
Reviewers should follow the best international review practices, in particular the Recommendations for Reviewers from the European Association of Science Editors,
Reviewers are obliged to inform the editor and/or editorial office as soon as possible of all possible conflicts of interest. 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 office's request for review.
When preparing the review, the reviewer must answer "yes", or “no, needs minor revision”, “no, needs significant revision”, “position missing, needs to be added” to the following questions (the question is indicated in the reviewer template on the OJS platform):
1. Does the title of the article correspond to its content and purpose?
2. Does the abstract with keywords reflect the main content of the article and comply with the IMRAD structure?
3. Are the key ideas of the article original, scientifically significant and interesting to the readership?
4. Are the main results of the article scientifically sound and significant?
5. Do the article and its key parts comply with the IMRAD structure and the technical requirements of the journal?
6. Are the tables and figures justified, relevant and comply with the requirements of the journal?
7. Is the research methodology appropriate and well-founded?
8. Is the language of the article scientific, grammatically correct, and understandable to the readership?
9. Does the “Discussion” section demonstrate knowledge of the relevant literature issues of the article?
10. Are the conclusions clear and well-reasoned?
If the reviewers chose the answers “no, needs minor revision”, “no, needs significant revision”, “position missing, needs to be added” for any item, they should write reasoned comments and explain to the authors how to improve the article.
If the article does not have a template position, for example position 6, then the reviewer chooses “position not provided”.
Editors have the right not to notify the author of those comments that contain a subjective assessment of the provisions of the manuscript, or are offensive, or do not meet the established requirements and criteria specified above.
Editors are mediators in all discussions between authors and reviewers during the review of the article before publication. If agreement cannot be reached, editors may invite additional reviewers.
The managing editor, together with the responsible editor, has the right to return the review for revision if the reviewer has not complied with the requirements established by the Recommendations for Reviewers, 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 addressed by the publication and/or to notify his/her place of affiliation about his/her actions.
Reviewers do not perform structural or linguistic-stylistic editing of the manuscript, but, if necessary, report editorial problems of the authors and editors of the journal in the appropriate review block.
Reviewers' decisions may be as follows (in accordance with the requirements of the OJS system):
accept submission;
revisions required (authors have 5 days to make minor changes in accordance with the reviewers' comments, the author sends an improved version that does not require additional review);
resubmit for review (in case of significant comments from the reviewer (the article requires revision of the content, inclusion in the text of additional results of experiments, other empirical studies to confirm the conclusions, etc.), the editorial office orders the author to submit a version of the article with repeated review, for this the author is given from two to four weeks to significantly revise the manuscript. Additional review is also required when the reviewer cannot make a decision and suggests involving another expert);
resubmit elsewhere (the reviewer recommends redirecting the submission to another journal or to another section of the journal, for which the editorial office will need to re-appoint another reviewer);
decline submission (the manuscript will be rejected, and the authors will be asked to resubmit the article after significantly revising the content, if, in the opinion of the reviewers, the article requires additional experiments, other empirical studies to confirm the conclusions);
see comments (the reviewer cannot make a decision and suggests that the editorial board decide collectively based on his comments).
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 resends the 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 managing editor, together with the responsible editor, directly assesses the quality of the changes or sends the article to the reviewers for re-evaluation. In the case of a second round of review, the reviewer may be asked to evaluate the revised version of the manuscript taking into account the reviewer’s recommendations submitted during the first round of review.
Reviewers must clearly and reasonedly express their point of view, be polite and constructive in their recommendations.
The author must respond to all reviewer comments in accordance with the review points.
The total review period cannot exceed 2 months from the date of receipt of the article by the reviewer.
The journal allows a maximum of two rounds of manuscript review.
The editorial board takes 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.
Reviewing manuscripts of authors with specific conflicts of interest
The Conflict of Interest for Editors: A Quick Guide to Ethical Editing for New Editors, section "Conflicts of Interest" (p. 7) states: "Editors should not be denied the opportunity to publish in their own journal, but they should not abuse their position. The journal should have a procedure for handling submissions from the editor or members of the editorial board that ensures that the review is conducted independently of the author-editor."
1. If the editor-in-chief, his relative or colleague from the department is the author (co-author) of the manuscript of the article, he transfers his powers as editor of the journal for the period of consideration of the article by internal and external reviewers to the deputy editor-in-chief and does not participate in the decision to publish the manuscript. The transfer of rights is carried out by transferring the login and password to the journal editor's account on OJS to the deputy editor-in-chief, who changes the password. After the review procedure is completed and the final decision on the manuscript is made, the deputy editor-in-chief returns the rights to the editor-in-chief by sending a password message, the editor-in-chief sets his password and further moderates the process of preparing the accepted manuscript of his article for publication.
ATTENTION! We advise the editor-in-chief as the author to submit the manuscript of the article from his private account, since the manager account of the editor-in-chief will be blocked during the manuscript review, but communication between editors and the editor-in-chief as the author must take place.
At the stage of internal review, the deputy editor-in-chief as the managing editor appoints a "blind" editor from a special account "blind_editor". If a decision is made to submit the manuscript for external review, the managing editor launches this procedure using two special accounts "reviewer1" and "reviewer2", which are accessible to those who are privately informed of the login and password by the managing editor. Thus, having received the powers of the managing editor back from the deputy editor-in-chief, the editor-in-chief will not be able to identify either the "blind" editor or the reviewers who worked on his manuscript.
ATTENTION! External reviewers cannot be colleagues of the editor-in-chief as an author from the institution where the editor-in-chief works.
2. If the authors (co-authors) of the manuscript of the article are members of the editorial team or employees of the editorial office, the editor-in-chief as the managing editor introduces the procedure of "blind" review of the manuscript and double anonymous review. That is, the "blind" editor does not see the author and does not see the reviewers. External reviewers cannot be colleagues of a member of the editorial board or editorial staff as an author from the institution where they work. Accordingly, such a member of the editorial board or editorial staff is not involved in discussing the candidacies of reviewers and making decisions. And in this case, special accounts "reviewer1" and "reviewer2" are used for reviewers.
In cases of authorship by the editor-in-chief, members of the editorial board or editorial staff, a note is made on the page of the corresponding article of the journal website: "The author (Name of the author) is (Editor-in-Chief / Member of the editorial board, editorial staff) of this journal. The manuscript was processed by an independent editor, and the author was excluded from the review and decision-making process".
Author appeals
Authors may appeal the refusal to publish. The procedure for such an appeal is described in the section “Complaints and Appeals” of the Editorial Policy of the journal.
On the use of artificial intelligence
We do not recommend using AI to perform the review process. However, the editorial office cannot guarantee that reviewers will not use AI, but we ask reviewers to be as honest as possible and to inform the editors in what way and with what results the reviewer used AI.
