Peer-review process

This journal uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.

Authors submitting their paper for review should ensure that no personal information indicating authorship is left in the document preferences. This is required to ensure the double-blind review process. The authors are kindly asked to follow the instructions to prepare their manuscript for double-blind review process.

After the paper is assigned with editor, the review usually takes four to eight weeks. At least two reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript. In case of doubt the third reviewer is asked to give an evaluation.

Ensuring a Blind Peer Review

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review for submission to this journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

  1. The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text, with "Author" and year used in the references and footnotes, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc.
  2. With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file (see under File in Word), by clicking on the following, beginning with File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.
  3. With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.