Advanced OPEN peer review:

We are following transparent and toughest ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ system. High-quality manuscripts are peer-reviewed by minimum two peers in the same field. OPEN peer review system provides the provision to reveal the identities of the authors and reviewers. In order to add transparency further, details of all reviewers and academic editors are published in the ‘peer-review history’ link. This link is available in the first page of all published papers. As a final step to provide highest level transparency in the process, all review comments, authors’ feedbacks, all versions of the manuscript and editorial comments are published with the paper in the ‘Review History’ link. This transparent process will help to eradicate any possible malicious/purposeful interference by any person (publishing staff, reviewer, editor, author, etc) during peer review. As a result of this unique system, all reviewers will get their due recognition and respect, once their names are published in the papers. If reviewers do not want to reveal their identities, we will honour that request as special case. In that case, only the review reports will be published as ‘anonymous reviewer report’.

Additionally ‘Advanced OPEN peer review’ greatly helps in ‘continuity and advancement of science’. We strongly believe that all the files related to peer review of a manuscript are valuable. All these files hold an important place in the continuity and advancement of science. If publishers publish the peer review reports along with published papers, this process can result in savings of thousands of hours of future authors during experiments, manuscript preparation, etc by minimizing the common errors after reading these previously published peer review reports. Therefore, as per our new official policy update, if a manuscript is published, all peer review reports will be available to the readers. All files (like the original manuscript, comments of the reviewers, revised manuscript, and editorial comment (if any)) related to the peer review, will be available in “Review history” link along with the published paper.

Additionally, we believe that one of the main objectives of the peer review system is ‘to improve the quality of a candidate manuscript’. Normally we try to publish the ‘average marks (out of 10)’ a manuscript received at initial peer review stage and at final publication stage to record its history of improvement during peer review. This process further increases the transparency. It is more important to record honestly the ‘strength and weakness of a manuscript’ than claiming that ‘our peer review system is perfect’. Therefore, these transparent processes (i.e. publication of review history files and evaluation scores of a particular manuscript) additionally give a clear idea of the strength and weakness of a published paper to the readers, which enhances the chances of proper use of the result of a research (and or reduces the chances of misuse of the weakness of the findings of the paper). Thus this transparent process may prove to be highly beneficial for the society in long run.

We strongly discourage any attempt by the authors to contact the reviewer directly to influence the review process. We also strongly discourage any attempt by the reviewers to contact the authors directly. General guidelines for Peer-review Process are available below.

Reviewer selection

Reviewer selection is a critical parameter to maintain the high peer review standard of any journal. Many factors are considered during peer reviewer selection like: proof of expertise in terms of published papers in the same area in reputed journals, affiliation, and reputation, specific suggestion, etc. We try to avoid reviewers who are slow, careless or do not provide sufficient justification for their decision (positive or negative). Authors can also identify peers that they want not to review their paper. As far as possible, the editorial team respects requests by authors to exclude reviewers whom they consider to be unsuitable. We also, as much as possible, try to rule out those reviewers who may have an obvious competing interest.

The main force behind our fast, efficient and quality Peer review system is the tremendous hard work of our Peer Reviewers & Editors. We are extremely grateful to the peer reviewers and editors for their great service.

Review process flow

The reviewers’ comments are generally sent to authors within 3 weeks after submission. With the help of the reviewers’ comments, FINAL decision (accepted or accepted with minor revision or accepted with major revision or rejected) will be sent to the corresponding author. Reviewers are asked if they would like to review a revised version of the manuscript. The editorial office may request a re-review regardless of a reviewer’s response in order to ensure a thorough and fair evaluation. Reviewers who may have offered an opinion not in accordance with the FINAL decision should not feel that their recommendation was not duly considered and their service not properly appreciated. Experts often disagree, and it is the job of the editorial team to make a FINAL decision.

Authors are encouraged to submit the revised manuscript within 7-15 days of receipt of reviewer’s comment (in case of minor corrections). But at any case, the revised manuscript submission should not go beyond 8 weeks (only for the cases of major revision which involves additional experiment, analysis etc.), in order to maintain journal’s mission of fast publication. Along with corrected manuscript authors need to submit a filled ‘review comment form’, any rebuttal to any point raised by reviewers. The Editor of the journal will have exclusive power to take the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of a manuscript during the peer review process.

One of the main policies of the journal is ‘fast spreading of scientific findings’ by publishing suitable manuscripts within 6 weeks after submission (except some abnormal cases). Under special circumstances, if the review process takes more time, the author(s) will be informed accordingly. The editorial board or referees may re-review manuscripts that are accepted pending revision. Manuscripts with latest and significant findings will be handled with the highest priority so that it could be published within a very short time. The journal is determined to promote integrity in research publication. In case of any suspected misconduct, journal management will reserve the right to re-review any manuscript at any stages before final publication.

General guidelines for Peer Review Process

• • We are strongly opposes the practice of duplicate publication or any type of plagiarism. If you suspect any unethical practice in this manuscript, kindly write it in the report with some proof/web links.
    • Studies which are carried out to reconfirm / replicate the results of any previously published paper with new data-set, may be considered for publication. But these types of studies should have a ‘clear declaration’ of this matter.
    • This publisher believes that no manuscript should be rejected only on the basis of ‘lack of Novelty’, provided the manuscript is sufficiently robust and technically sound. Too often a journal’s decision to publish a paper is dominated by what the Editor/reviewer think is interesting and will gain greater readership — both of which are subjective judgments and lead to decisions which are frustrating and delay the publication. The journals will rigorously peer-review your submissions and publish all papers that are judged to be technically sound. Judgments about the importance of any particular paper are then made after publication by the readership (who are the most qualified to determine what is of interest to them).
    • Materials & methods (Kindly comment on the suitability and technical standards of the methods. Sufficient details of the methods/process should be provided so that another researcher is able to reproduce the experiments described)
    • Results & discussion (Kindly comment on: 1. Are the data well controlled and robust? 2. Authors should provide relevant and current references during discussion. 3. Discussion and conclusions should be based on actual facts and figures. Biased claims should be pointed out. 4. Are statistical analyses must for this paper? If yes, have sufficient and appropriate statistical analyses been carried out?)
    • Conclusion (Is the conclusion supported by the data, discussed inside the manuscript? Conclusions should not be biased and should be based on the data, presented inside the manuscript only. Authors should provide adequate proof for their claims without overselling them)
    •  Are all the references cited relevant and adequate? Are there any other suitable current references authors need to cite?
    • This publisher believes in constructive criticism. Reviewers are encouraged to be honest but not offensive in their language (Unnecessarily harsh words may be modified or removed at the editors’ discretion). It is expected that the reviewers should suggest the authors on how they can strengthen their paper to make it acceptable. Comments of the reviewers should be sufficiently informative and helpful to reach a Editorial Decision. We strongly advise that a negative review should also explain the weaknesses of any manuscript, so that the concerned authors can understand the basis of rejection and he/she can improve the manuscript based on those comments. Authors also should not confuse straightforward and true comments with unfair criticism.
    • We are very much reluctant to go against suggestions (particularly on technical areas) of the reviewers. Therefore, authors are requested to treat the suggestions of reviewers with utmost importance.
    • Appeal: Rejected papers are given the opportunity for a formal appeal. Appeal requests should be made in writing, not by telephone, and should be addressed to admin@peerreviewcentral.com with the word “appeal” in the subject line. If an author remains unsatisfied, he or she can write to the Editorial Office, citing the manuscript reference number. In all these cases, it is likely that some time will elapse before journal can respond, and the paper must not be submitted for publication elsewhere during this time. Authors should provide detailed reasons for the appeal and point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ and/or Academic Editor’s comments. Authors should also be aware that priority is given to new submissions to the journal and so the processing of the appeal may well take longer than the processing of the original submission. If an appeal is rejected, further appeals of the decision will not be considered and the paper may not be resubmitted.