Peer Review Process

Each article undergoes double-blind peer review.

Internal peer review is a process of preliminary evaluation by the editorial board. All manuscripts submitted to the editorial board are checked by the editor-in-chief for the purpose, topic, and editorial policy of the collection. Manuscripts that do not meet the topic, editorial policy, or editorial standards of the collection are rejected for review.

Manuscripts of articles that do not meet the requirements of the collection for structure and design are returned to the authors for revision. If the author has not sent a response to the editor's request within 30 calendar days, the manuscript is considered not under consideration by the editorial board of the collection.

Manuscripts of articles in which, after checking for plagiarism in the Unichesk and/or Strikeplagiarism systems, a significant percentage of text borrowings are found are returned to the authors for revision. If signs of plagiarism are detected, the article is returned to the author without the right to resubmit it.

After internal checks, the original author's article is submitted for external review (peer review).

External review is an evaluation of the submitted material by independent experts. Articles submitted for publication are subject to double-blind review on the Open Journal System (OJS) platform by at least two external reviewers - experts in the scientific field on the subject of the submitted article.

Editorial board members recommend as reviewers individuals who are experts in the scientific field of the submitted article and have publications on its subject. Editorial board members may also be reviewers.

Reviewers must adhere to the best international review practices, in particular, the Recommendations for Reviewers from the European Association of Science Editors, the Web of Science Academy, and the requirements for this publication.

Reviewers are required to notify the editor-in-chief and/or the editorial board of possible conflicts of interest as soon as possible. They must adhere to the principle of confidentiality when working with the manuscript of the article, in particular, not to use and/or reproduce it in whole or in part, not to disclose information about the editorial office's request for review.

The reviewer's answer options: "yes", "no, needs minor revision" or "no, needs significant revision" to the following questions (indicated in the reviewer template on the OJS platform):

– Does the title of the article correspond to its content and purpose?

– Does the abstract reflect the main content of the article?

– Are the key ideas of the article original, scientifically significant and interesting for the readership?

– Are the main results of the article significant and scientifically substantiated?

– Does the article and its key parts comply with the IMRAD structure and technical requirements of the collection?

– How well-founded, relevant and meet the requirements of the collection are the illustrations (tables, figures, etc.)?

– Is the research methodology appropriate and well-founded?

– Is the language of the article scientific, grammatically correct, and understandable to the readership?

– Is the knowledge of the literature demonstrated in the "Discussion" section that corresponds to the topic of the article?

– How clear and well-reasoned are the conclusions?

If the reviewer has selected the answers "no, needs minor revision" or "no, needs significant revision" for any item, he must provide substantiated comments and explain to the authors how to improve the article.

The editor-in-chief has the right not to inform the author about comments that contain a subjective assessment of the provisions of the article, or are not tactful, or do not meet the established requirements and criteria specified earlier.

The editor-in-chief is a mediator in all discussions between authors and reviewers during the review of the article before publication. If agreement is not reached, the editor-in-chief may invite additional reviewers. The editor-in-chief has the right to return the review for revision if the reviewer has not complied with the requirements established by the Recommendations for Reviewers or if the review contains ambiguous remarks. In case of significant remarks to the reviewer, the editor-in-chief has the right to exclude the reviewer from the list of persons to whom the editorial board of the publication addresses, and/or to notify his/her place of affiliation about his/her actions.

Reviewers do not perform structural or linguistic-stylistic editing of the manuscript, but, if necessary, inform the authors and editors of the journal about such problems in the appropriate review block.

Reviewers' decisions may be as follows:

– accept;

– accept after minor revisions (authors have five days to make minor changes, in accordance with the reviewers' comments);

– accept after significant revisions (authors have two weeks to significantly revise the manuscript);

– reject with a proposal for resubmission (the manuscript will be rejected, and the authors will be offered to resubmit the article after significant revision of the content, if, in the opinion of the reviewers, the article requires additional experiments, other empirical studies to confirm the conclusions);

– reject (the article is rejected without the right to resubmit if it has serious shortcomings and/or does not contain original scientific results).

If the article can be accepted subject to revision, it is returned to the author(s) together with the reviewers’ comments and suggestions for its improvement, as well as the editors’ recommendations (if any). The author resubmits the revised version of the article together with clear responses to the reviewers’ comments. The author must highlight all changes in the text of the article.

The editor-in-chief directly assesses the quality of the changes or sends the article to the reviewers for re-evaluation. During the second round of review, the reviewer may be asked to evaluate the revised version of the manuscript in light of his recommendations during the first round of review. Reviewers should clearly and reasonedly express their opinion, be polite and constructive in their recommendations.

The author must respond to all the reviewer’s comments, in accordance with the review points. The total review period cannot exceed three months from the date of receipt of the article by the reviewer.

The collection allows no more than two rounds of manuscript review.

The editorial board takes into account the comments of the reviewers, but the final decision on the publication of the article is made by the editor-in-chief of the collection.

Author appeals. Authors may appeal the refusal to publish. The procedure for such an appeal is described in the "Complaints and Appeals" section of the collection's editorial policy.