Peer Review & Publication

Submission of an academic paper is followed by editors' assessment of its compliance with the formal eligibility requirements, citation standard, editorial policy, aims, and topics of the journal.

An Executive Editor checks the paper for plagiarism once the stage of initial admissibility is successfully passed.

Based on the results of the plagiarism checkup, the paper is sent to 2 (two) reviewers. As far as possible, 1 (one) foreign and 1 (one) local expert should be involved in the review process.

The reviewer is selected according to the field competence and they may be a person with a relevant (practical and/or research) experience/qualification in the field of research paper to be evaluated.

It is imperative that the reviewers should be independent and not affiliated to the same institution as authors.

The identity of the reviewers is anonymous, on the one hand, to the author, and for selected reviewers, on the other hand. The anonymity of reviewers is ensured and protected, both during the review process and after its completion. 

Inability to a timely evaluation of the paper or the lack of relevant field competence requires the reviewer's written notice to the Managing Editor within a reasonable time.

Reviewers are guided by the criteria set for the paper evaluation and submit an evaluation report in writing to the Managing and Executive Editors in order to communicate the deficiencies to the authors for further rectification (See, Double-Blind Peer Review Form ― Appendix № 4).

For the sake of effective review activity, the reviewer is authorized to address the Editorial Board with a recommendation, which will not be deemed as an infringement of principles of independent and impartial evaluation. 

The reviewer gives one of the following recommendations:

a) The paper can be published in a scientific journal without significant technical-essential editing;

b) The paper requires substantial editing before publication;

c) The paper is not subject to publication.

The reviewer's recommendation concerning further rectification of flaws should include relevant references and explanations in the evaluated paper.

If the reviewers recommend rectification of flaws in the paper, Managing and Executive Editors communicate with authors and coordinate the correction process.

Managing Editor assesses the quality of authors' adoption of the recommendation given by the reviewer.

Based on the reviewers' evaluation, the Managing Editor prepares a submission to the Editor-in-Chief for an assessment of the issue of publishing the paper and for further submission to the Editorial Board for the final decision;

Upon the decisions of the Editor-in-Chief, with respect to providing the periodicity of publication, the paper may be published in the next issue of the journal if correction of the flaws reported by the reviewers is time-consuming, which may hinder timely publication of the journal or due to objective basis other than that.

In case of denial of publishing the paper, at the author's request the reviewers’ evaluation may be sent to the author with respect to the anonymity of the reviewers.