Peer-Review Policy

Journals of this publisher perform an exact peer-review process to verify the strength of the study and confirm the scientific precision of the manuscripts. All papers will assign to the editorial review. Independent peer-reviewers with related knowledge of the submitted papers assess the papers to support editors to define the validity of a manuscript for publication in each journal. Once a manuscript is submitted by the corresponding author, all authors are notified about the submission and the corresponding author can track the manuscript in the journal’s account which is made on each journal’s website. The Editor-in-Chief of each journal inspects the submitted manuscript.

The editorial workflow gives the Editor-in-Chief the authority to reject any manuscript because of the inappropriateness of its subject, lack of quality, or incorrectness of its results.

Only the Editor-in-Chief can approve a manuscript for publication, whereas editors recommend manuscripts for acceptance to the Editor-in-Chief.

The peer-review process is double-blinded, i.e., the reviewers do not know who the authors of the manuscript are, while the authors also do not have access to the information of who the peer-reviewers are.

Peer Review Type

Journals of this publisher use a double-blind peer review system where the authors do not know who considered their paper.

Peer Review Process

The editorial office conducts an initial assessment on submitted papers to guarantee their accordance with editorial policies, ethical standards, and submission guidelines. Therefore, the papers should first be formatted according to the journal’s style.

The submissions are predominantly will be assessed by one of our statisticians who test the papers for the statistical methods. After completion of editorial checks, then the submission is considered by the Editor-in-Chief who determines, that the paper is directed for peer review through assigned to one of the Associate Editors/ Section Editors/Co-editor, based on the subject of the manuscript, to inspect the paper. The Associate Editor/ Section Editor/Co-editor leads the peer-review process for papers within their field of work. If they determined that the paper is not of enough value to go toward the standard peer-review process or if the title of the paper is not suitable for the related journal scope, the paper will be rejected with no more handling. If the Editor ascertained that the submitted paper is of adequate quality and detected to be within the scope of each journal, then the paper will be directed toward one of the editorial board members according to the title of the paper, the accessibility of the editors, and the lack of any probable conflicts of interest with the submitting authors for a secondary check of the paper. After an assessment, the manuscript will be sent to a minimum of two external reviewers for peer review. If an Editor, employee, or Editorial Board Member, submits a paper, it is appointed to an independent Editor who will conduct the peer review process, then the results of the review process are directly assigned to the Editor-in-Chief.

In our journals, all authors and reviewers will adhere to COPE Core Practices and WAME guidelines to keep all ethics of peer-review, particularly the process of the manuscripts that involve their personal relationships. The Editor-in-Chief will finally receive all peer-review results and will decide to accept or reject the papers. The Editor-in-Chief or any other Editor who is responsible for the initial and final decision of the papers should release themselves to peer-review or take decisions on the papers that are brought out by authors who are affiliated to the same institute/university as the editor, or if they are a family member or a collaborator. They can therefore suggest somebody else on the editorial board who could offer a neutral opinion on the manuscript.

Peer Reviewers

Authors can also recommend reviewers, who should have a current publication record in the field of the paper and should not be from the same department as the author

Appeals and Complaints

Any appeal on the assessed papers or any complaint during the peer-review period should be submitted by writing to the Editor-in-Chief. All cases will be conducted according to the COPE guidelines.

When the reviewers submitted their reports, the editor can make one of the following editorial recommendations:

Acceptance: the manuscript could be e-Published. We try to reduce this process to a maximum of two weeks. Before e-Publication, the corresponding author can verify a proof copy of the paper. After e-Publication, the paper will be in a queue to be published in one of the Journals upcoming issues

Minor revision: authors will receive comments on their manuscript, in which the authors will be asked to submit a revised copy beside a cover letter showing authors’ rejoinders and a marked copy utilizing the Track Changes in Review menu of Microsoft Word Documents. The revised manuscript should be submitted one month after the decision letter. Otherwise, authors need to go through a resubmission process

Major revision: it means a chance to reorganize the manuscript to meet the required scientific criteria for another review process. Authors should pay more attention to reviewers’ comments and focus on their highlighted points. The editor may/may not request the authors to resubmit their revised manuscript besides a cover letter and a marked copy. The revised manuscript should be submitted one month after the decision letter. Otherwise, authors need to go through a resubmission process

Reject: in most cases, methodological and scientific concerns are the main origins of rejection. Causes of rejection will be sent to the authors to provide more chances for them for publication in other journals

Withdraw: if the manuscript does not meet the scope of each journal, it will be withdrawn with the suggestion to be sent to another journal

If the decision is, “review again after minor changes or review again after major changes, the system will automatically notify the corresponding author about the reviewer’s suggestions and recommendations.

The author/authors will have a period of time to submit the revised form of the article. After this, the Editor-in-Chief will decide if a new stage of review is necessary, and if it is the case, he will select two reviewers.

After the new review stage, according to the reviewer’s recommendations, the Editor-in-Chief will take the final decision.

Retraction

In keeping with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines, a retraction will be considered by our editors if:

It has clear evidence indicating the results are unreliable, either because of major errors (eg, miscalculation or experimental error, data fabrication, image manipulation, …)

It has plagiarism.

The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper citation to previous sources, permission to reproduce, or justification (ie, cases of redundant publication)

There is a copyright infringement or other legal issues

It reports unethical research

It has been published solely on the basis of a compromised or manipulated peer review process

The author(s) failed to declare a major conflict of interest

Authors or editors of each journal may retract a paper. However, the final decision is made by the editors for retracting the material. If none of the authors will approve publishing a retraction, the editor/s may request such a retraction from the investigating institution, or the editor may ask for a retraction on behalf of the journal. In each condition, the editor should inform the author(s) or institution affiliated with the author(s) for publishing a retraction.

Note

After publishing a retraction, HTML version of the document will be removed from the site. Additionally, The PDF file of the article is retained unchanged; only a watermark showing the “retracted” label is placed on each page of the PDF. Finally, a link is made to the original article.