All submitted manuscripts are strictly and thoroughly evaluated by experts. Immediately after submission, a preliminary technical check of the manuscript will be conducted. A suitable scientific editor from the Editorial Board will be notified of the submission and invited to perform a preliminary editorial check and recommend reviewers. They may decide to continue with the evaluation process, reject a manuscript, or request revisions before evaluation. If the peer review process continues, the Editorial Board will organize the peer review, performed by independent experts, and will collect at least two review reports for each manuscript. We ask authors for revisions before a final decision is made. The final decision is made by an academic editor (usually a member of the Editorial Board). Accepted manuscripts are then internally edited for proofreading and for the English language if it has not been submitted by the author.
Profile and Responsibilities of Reviewers
Reviewers must meet the following criteria:
- Must not have conflicts of interest with any authors;
- Must not have published together with the authors of the respective article;
- Must hold a Ph.D.;
- Must have relevant experience and a proven publication record;
- Must be experienced researchers in the field of the submitted work;
- Must hold an official and recognized academic affiliation.
Reviewers evaluating a manuscript will have the necessary expertise to assess the scientific quality of the manuscript, will provide quality review reports, and will remain responsive throughout the peer review process while maintaining standards of professionalism and ethics.
Benefits of Reviewers
Reviewing is often an unseen and unrewarded task, despite its importance. We strive to recognize the efforts of all our reviewers.
Evaluation Reports
The evaluation report must be written in Romanian and English, if the author is not Romanian.
Evaluation reports should contain the following: a brief summary (a short sentence) outlining the purpose of the work, its main contributions, and strengths, along with general comments on the concept highlighting areas of weakness, testability of the hypothesis, methodological inaccuracies, missing controls, etc. The evaluation should comment on the completeness of the review topic covered, the relevance of the review topic, identified knowledge gaps, the appropriateness of references, etc. These comments focus on the scientific content of the manuscript and should be specific enough for the authors to respond. Specific comments regarding line numbers, tables, or figures that highlight inaccuracies in the text or unclear sentences. These comments should also focus on the scientific content and not on spelling, formatting, or English language issues that can be addressed at a later stage by our internal staff. Questions can also be formulated to help guide research articles. The content of your evaluation report will be assessed.
Evaluation of the Manuscript
During the evaluation of the manuscript, the following aspects will be assessed:
- Novelty: Is the question original and well-defined? Do the results provide an advancement of current knowledge?
- Scope: Does the work fit within the journal’s scope?
- Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses carefully identified as such?
- Quality: Is the article written appropriately? Are the data and analyses presented correctly? Are the highest standards used for the presentation of results?
- Scientific Soundness: Is the study correctly designed and technically sound? Were analyses performed with the highest technical standards? Are the data robust enough to draw conclusions? Are methods, tools, software, and reagents described in sufficient detail to allow another researcher to reproduce the results? Is the raw data available and correct (where applicable)?
- Interest to Readers: Are the conclusions interesting to the journal’s readership? Will the paper attract a wide readership or be of interest only to a limited number of people?
- Overall Merit: Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work advance current knowledge?
Submitted manuscripts should meet the highest standards of publication ethics. See the ethics policy.
The Manuscript Acceptance Process
- Accept in Present Form: The paper can be accepted without any further changes.
- Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper can, in principle, be accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five days for minor revisions.
- Reconsider after Major Revisions: Acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions made. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. Usually, two rounds of major revisions are offered per manuscript. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within ten days, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.
- Reject: The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution, and may be rejected without offering the possibility of resubmission to the journal.
Decisions regarding revisions, acceptance, or rejection must always be well justified.