Review and publication process

Original articles, review articles, case studies and meta-analyses submitted for publication are subject to the review procedure. Letters to the editors, post-conference reports and reviews are not sent for review, although the editors reserve the right to consult reviewers with regard to selected texts.

Articles are assessed on two levels: internal (editorial) review and external review (see: Review form).

Stage 1. Initial text verification and internal review

  1. The submitted text is initially verified and assessed by the editors. At this stage, the following are checked:
  • compliance of the subject of the work with the profile of the journal;
  • innovative approach to the topic, chances for a wider group of recipients to be interested in the work;
  • preparation of the article in terms of formal requirements (compliance with the guidelines provided on the journal’s website), including the correctness of the selected statistical methods and the calculations performed;
  • statements by the authors regarding the originality of the work and potential conflicts of interest.
  1. The article is assessed by the anti-plagiarism system.
  2. If the managing editor decides that the article needs to be corrected and supplemented, the author will be asked for corrections or additional information. The next stage of reviewing takes place only after the article is fully adapted to the requirements of the journal.
  3. Articles submitted for publication that do not receive a positive evaluation may be rejected at this editorial stage.

Stage 2. External review

  1. A pre-approved article is sent by the managing editor to at least two independent reviewers. Reviewers cannot represent the same research centre or any institution indicated by the authors as an affiliation or indicated in the declaration of conflict of interest.
  1. The review is conducted in the double-blind review mode, which means that the identities of the authors and reviewers cannot be disclosed. The managing editor is responsible for anonymising the text provided to the reviewer and the review provided to the author.
  2. The review is performed via the journal’s website using the review form and ends with an unambiguous conclusion:
  • accepted without corrections;
  • publishable with minor corrections;
  • publishable with major corrections (in this case, the article corrected by the authors is sent back to the reviewer);
  • rejected.
  1. In the case of contradictory opinions, additional reviewers are appointed.
  2. The editor-in-chief makes the final decision on whether or not to accept an article.

Stage 3. Text correction and re-review

  1. After completion of the peer-review process, the corresponding author is informed about the opinions and comments of the reviewers and about any suggestions and comments of the editorial office related to the preparation of the article for publication.
  2. Within the time limit set by the managing editor, the authors should make the suggested changes and corrections. All changes should be made with the text changes tracking function enabled (available in the Review tab in MS Word) or marked in red (the text that needs to be deleted should be marked in red) and crossed out (Tools), for example: text.
  3. The authors prepare a response to the review in which they indicate which corrections have been made and which have not. If the authors have not followed the recommendations of the reviewer and the editor, a satisfactory explanation is required.
  4. In justified cases, the revised article is sent back to one or both reviewers.
  5. This stage ends with a clear decision to accept or reject the article.

Stage 4. Linguistic verification and composition

  1. A manuscript that has been accepted for publication is subject to linguistic verification and shall be appropriately edited by a person with appropriate linguistic competence.
  2. If, during the editing of a manuscript, any significant changes are made, the text in PDF format is sent to the corresponding author, who shall approve these within five days. If the author does not reply after this time, the editors consider the changes as approved. This is the last moment before publication when authors can make editorial and stylistic changes.
  3. After approval by the authors, the article is published on the journal’s website in the ahead of print tab and is then assigned to the appropriate issue of the journal.