Peer Review Policy

Peer Review Policy

All original research articles, case series, case reports, Systematic Reviews and meta-analysis are subject to Double anonymous peer review by two independent peer reviewers. Exceptions to this are invited editorials, commentaries, opinions (invited by the editor) that do not undergo any peer review. 

Manuscript Evaluation

First, the Editor will evaluate whether the manuscript is submitted as per the Author submission guidelines. Manuscripts can be rejected at this stage for the following reasons

The research conducted is outside the aims and cope of the journal

The article is of very general nature without any scientific rigour,

The research is poorly presented with no clarity on the methods and findings discussed

The language is of very poor quality and contained highly plagiarised content.

The manuscripts that meet the minimum criteria are passed on to at least two external experts for review.

Double blind review is adopted, where both the reviewers and author remain anonymous throughout the process. The personal identities, researcher identities, the institutional identities and any such personal identifiers that would bias the review process will be masked

Selection of Peer Reviewers

Peer reviewers with subject matter expertise relevant to the article are selected based on the publication records and institutional profile of the reviewers. Further criteria for peer reviewer selection include no conflict of interest with any connection to the author, authenticity of the contact details and the diversity in terms of geographic locations

Whenever possible, Peer reviewers are matched to the paper according to their specialization, and our database is constantly being updated.

We do not solicit recommendations for reviewers by the authors

Peer Review

Reviewers are asked to evaluate the author manuscript and provide their comments and/or markup comments within the manuscript through the online editorial workflow tool.

Supplementary material(s) is subject to review, based on the discretion of the Editor.

Language correction is not part of the peer review process, but reviewers may, if so wish, suggest corrections to the manuscript.

Reviews are signed anonymous and reviews are not posted along with the articles published

The reviewers can make the following decisions

Accepted

Accepted with revisions

Rejected

Duration

The time required for the review process is depending on the responses from the reviewers. If the reviewer reports contradict one another or a report is unnecessarily delayed, a further expert opinion will be taken.

Author’s Response to Review Reports

Authors are advised to carefully go through the peer review comments and address all the comments made by reviewers. Author replies should clearly explain the changes made as per reviewer comments and if no changes are made, authors should provide a rationale for such decisions

Final decision

A simple majority decision of the two anonymous reviewers and the Editor shall decide if a manuscript is approved or rejected after getting the author replies to reviews and changes made to the manuscript as per reviewer comments. If the submitted article is not to the specifications or standard of the journal, it can be rejected by the Editor-in -Chief