Editorial Workflow
Every submitted manuscript undergoes a thorough single-blind peer-review. Please refer to the visual flowchart of the editorial workflow. The whole process is outlined as follows:
Once a manuscript is submitted, it is screened by the editorial office to ensure that it meets the journal guidelines. The initial screening includes a check for manuscript scope relevance to the journal, plagiarism (via iThenticate), adherence to ethical guidelines, and ensuring all necessary files, declarations, and author details are present.
The Editorial Office contacts the authors to request any missing information or to clarify technical details required to move the paper forward. Manuscripts that are found to be fundamentally outside the journal's scope, significantly lacking in originality, or unable to meet the required technical and ethical standards will be rejected without further review.
Manuscripts that pass the initial screening process are sent to the Editor-in-Chief to ensure that they fit the scope of the journal and are eligible to be considered for publication. The EiC can reject the manuscript without further processing or ask for revisions at this stage to make the manuscript eligible for peer review.
After that, the manuscript is assigned to an Associate Editor who checks the manuscript's quality and novelty to decide whether or not it can be sent to peer reviewers. The Associate Editor is authorized to reject the manuscript without further processing. If the Associate Editor finds the manuscript suitable to go through the review process, then he/she sends it to peer reviewers.
Reviewers are selected based on their expertise and publication record in the specific subject area. They must have no known conflict of interest with the authors and must not share the same institutional affiliation.
The peer reviewers (minimum two reviewers) will send their reports to the Associate Editor, who will, in turn, make one of the following editorial decisions:
- Reject
- Major Changes Required
- Minor Changes Required
- Accept
If the majority of the reviewers recommend “Reject,” the Associate Editor must reject the manuscript without further revisions.
The Associate Editor cannot "Accept" a manuscript until all concerns and recommendations raised by the reviewers have been properly addressed by the authors and verified by the Associate Editor.
The authors are notified of the Associate Editor's decision along with the reviewers' reports. If the manuscript requires revision, whether major or minor, the authors will be given a deadline for submitting the revised version. Normally, four weeks are given for major revisions and two weeks for minor revisions.
For manuscripts requiring Major Revisions, the Associate Editor must return the revised version to the original reviewers. This ensures that the technical concerns raised in the first round have been fully and accurately addressed. Then, the Associate Editor makes the final decision based on the reviewers' final assessment.
For manuscripts requiring Minor Revisions, the Associate Editor has the choice to send the revision back to all original reviewers, consult only one of the original reviewers, or proceed with an editorial decision without further external review if the Associate Editor is satisfied that the requested changes were straightforward and correctly implemented.
The Associate Editor can ask for Major/Minor revisions for more than one round, or they may also “Reject” the manuscript if the authors, for any reason, were not able to address the reviewers’ concerns adequately.
Once the Associate Editor accepts the manuscript, the manuscript is sent for final approval by the Editor-in-Chief, who may still request further revisions before final publication of the article.
The review process is a single-blind peer review where reviewers know the authors' names and affiliations, but authors do not know those of the reviewers.
Manuscripts submitted by an Associate Editor or Editor-in-Chief are handled by an independent Editor from outside their institution, and the submitting member is excluded from all stages of the peer-review process for that paper.
All manuscripts are treated as confidential documents. Editors and reviewers are prohibited from sharing or using the data before publication.
