Peer Review Policy

Peer review is a crucial component of the publication process, ensuring that our journals uphold the highest quality standards for published papers. All manuscripts submitted to our journals undergo a rigorous peer-review process conducted by subject-matter experts.

Upon submission, the journal’s Managing Editor will conduct a technical pre-check of the manuscript. An appropriate academic editor will then be assigned to the submission, where they will perform an editorial pre-check and recommend potential reviewers. The academic editor may decide to either proceed with the peer review, reject the manuscript, or request revisions prior to peer review.

If the peer review process continues, the Editorial Office will coordinate the review, enlisting independent experts to provide at least two review reports per manuscript. Authors may be asked to revise their manuscript based on reviewer feedback, with a second round of peer review required if necessary. The final decision on publication is made by an academic editor, typically the Editor-in-Chief, an Editorial Board Member, or the Guest Editor of a Special Issue.

Reviewer Role and Responsibilities

The role of the reviewer is vital and bears a great responsibility in ensuring the integrity of the scholarly record. Every reviewer is expected to perform manuscript evaluation in a timely, transparent, and ethical manner, following COPE guidelines.

Reviewers should meet the following criteria:

• Hold no conflicts of interest with any of the authors;
• Should not come from the same institution as the authors;
• Should not have published together with the authors in the last three years;
• Have relevant experience and have a proven publication record in the field of the submitted paper (Scopus, ORCID);
• Are experienced scholars in the field of the submitted paper;
• Hold an official and recognized academic affiliation.

We strive for a rigorous peer review to ensure a thorough evaluation of each manuscript—this is a fundamental task for our reviewers. Reviewers who accept to review a manuscript are expected to:

• Have the necessary expertise to judge the scientific quality of the manuscript;
• Provide quality review reports and remain responsive throughout the peer review process;
• Maintain standards of professionalism and ethics.

General Guidelines for Reviewers

Invitation to Review

Manuscripts submitted to our journals are reviewed by at least two experts, who can be volunteer reviewers, members of the Reviewer Board or reviewers suggested by the academic editor during the preliminary check. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and to provide a recommendation to the external editor on whether a manuscript should be accepted, requires revisions, or should be rejected.

Potential Conflicts of Interest

We ask reviewers to declare any potential conflicts of interest and email the journal Editorial Office if they are unsure if something constitutes a potential conflict of interest. Possible conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Reviewer works in the same institute as one of the authors;
• Reviewer is a co-author, collaborator, joint grant holder, or has any other academic link, with any of the authors within the past three years;
• Reviewer has a close personal relationship to any of the authors;
• Reviewer may in any way gain or lose financially from publication of the paper;
• Reviewer has any other non-financial conflicts of interest (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other) with any of the authors.

Reviewers should disclose any conflicts of interest that may be perceived as bias for or against the paper or authors.

Reviewers are also recommended to read the relevant descriptions in the Ethical Guidelines For Peer Reviewers by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Please kindly note that if reviewers are asked to assess a manuscript they previously reviewed for another journal, this is not considered to be a conflict of interest. In this case, reviewers should feel free to let the Editorial Office know if the manuscript has been improved or not compared to the previous version.

Declaration of Confidentiality

Our journals operate single- or double-blind peer review. Until the article is published, reviewers should keep the content of the manuscript, including the Abstract, confidential. Reviewers should also be careful not to reveal their identity to the authors, either in their comments or in metadata for reports submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF format.

Review Reports

Review reports should contain the following:

• A brief summary (one short paragraph) outlining the aim of the paper, its main contributions and strengths.
• General concept comments
  Article: highlighting areas of weakness, the testability of the hypothesis, methodological inaccuracies, missing controls, etc.
  Review: commenting on the completeness of the review topic covered, the relevance of the review topic, the gap in knowledge identified, the appropriateness of references, etc.
  These comments are focused on the scientific content of the manuscript and should be specific enough for the authors to be able to respond.
• Specific comments referring to line numbers, tables or figures that point out inaccuracies within the text or sentences that are unclear. These comments should also focus on the scientific content and not on spelling, formatting or English language problems, as these can be addressed at a later stage by our internal staff.

General questions to help guide your review report for research articles:

• Is the manuscript clear, relevant for the field and presented in a well-structured manner? 
• Are the cited references mostly recent publications (within the last 5 years) and relevant? Does it include an excessive number of self-citations?
• Is the manuscript scientifically sound and is the experimental design appropriate to test the hypothesis?
• Are the manuscript’s results reproducible based on the details given in the methods section?
• Are the figures/tables/images/schemes appropriate? Do they properly show the data? Are they easy to interpret and understand? Is the data interpreted appropriately and consistently throughout the manuscript? Please include details regarding the statistical analysis or data acquired from specific databases.
• Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented?
• Please evaluate the ethics statements and data availability statements to ensure they are adequate.

General questions to help guide your review report for review articles:

• Is the review clear, comprehensive and of relevance to the field? Is a gap in knowledge identified?
• Was a similar review published recently and, if yes, is this current review still relevant and of interest to the scientific community?
• Are the cited references mostly recent publications (within the last 5 years) and relevant? Are any relevant citations omitted? Does it include an excessive number of self-citations?
• Are the statements and conclusions drawn coherent and supported by the listed citations?
• Are the figures/tables/images/schemes appropriate? Do they properly show the data? Are they easy to interpret and understand?

The content of your review report will be rated by an Academic Editor from a scientific point of view as well as general usefulness to the improvement of the manuscript. 

Overall Recommendation

Please provide an overall recommendation for the next processing stage of the manuscript as follows:

• Accept in Present Form: The paper can be accepted without any further changes.
• Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper can in principle be accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.
• Reconsider after Major Revisions: The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is normally provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within ten days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. If the required revision time is estimated to be longer than 2 months, we will recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting so as to avoid unnecessary time pressure and to ensure that all manuscripts are sufficiently revised.
• Reject: The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and the paper may be rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal.

Note that your recommendation is visible only to journal editors, not to the authors. Decisions on revisions, acceptance, or rejections must always be well justified.