Reviewing process

The peer-review process is conducted according to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers ( Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers, COPE guidance ). All manuscripts received by the Editorial Office are initially checked to determine whether they are properly prepared and comply with the journal’s ethical and editorial policies. Manuscripts that do not comply with the journal’s ethical policies may be rejected before peer review. Manuscripts that are not properly prepared may be returned to the authors for correction and resubmission.

Following these initial checks, the Editor-in-Chief, Guest Editor, or an appropriately appointed Editorial Board member in cases involving a conflict of interest will assess whether the manuscript falls within the scope of the journal and meets the minimum scientific and editorial requirements for external peer review. This initial assessment may consider the manuscript’s relevance to the journal, scientific soundness, methodological adequacy, originality, scholarly contribution, and overall suitability for the journal. Manuscripts that do not meet these requirements may be rejected without external peer review. Where appropriate, desk-rejection decisions may be reviewed or confirmed by the Editor-in-Chief or another independent senior editor.

Editorial Board members may submit scientific articles to the journal. Such submissions are subject to the same editorial and scientific standards as all other submissions. Special measures will be taken to ensure that the double-blind peer-review process remains rigorous, impartial, independent, and free from conflicts of interest. An Editorial Board member submitting a manuscript will not participate in the selection or appointment of the handling editor or reviewers and will have no involvement in the editorial decision concerning the manuscript. An independent handling editor with no conflict of interest will be appointed to oversee the peer-review process. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the journal may publish an appropriate disclosure describing the measures taken to ensure the independence and integrity of the editorial and peer-review process.

The journal screens submitted manuscripts using plagiarism-detection and similarity-checking software. Similarity reports are evaluated by the Editorial Office and/or the responsible editor in context and are not used as an automatic or solely percentage-based criterion for determining plagiarism. Suspected cases of plagiarism, duplicate publication, inappropriate text recycling, or other forms of publication misconduct will be handled in accordance with the journal’s ethical policies and applicable COPE guidance.

Editorial Workflow

Peer Review

Once a manuscript passes the initial editorial checks, it will be assigned to a handling editor and sent to at least two independent experts for peer review. The journal follows a double-blind peer-review process: the reviewers’ identities are not disclosed to the authors, nor are the authors’ identities disclosed to the reviewers. Review reports and reviewer identities are treated as confidential and must not be disclosed outside the editorial and peer-review process unless disclosure is required by law or expressly authorized by the parties concerned. Reviewer comments intended for the authors will be communicated to them as part of the peer-review process. The handling editor evaluates the reviewers’ reports and makes or recommends the appropriate editorial decision in accordance with the journal’s editorial procedures. All editorial decisions remain subject to the journal’s appeals and conflict-of-interest procedures described below.

For regular submissions, reviewers are selected and approved by the responsible handling editor based on their expertise, independence, and absence of conflicts of interest. Assistant editors or members of the Editorial Office may administratively issue reviewer invitations and coordinate the review process on behalf of the handling editor. Reviewers may include suitably qualified Editorial Board members or Guest Editors, provided that they have appropriate expertise and no conflict of interest. For special issues, the Guest Editor may recommend suitable reviewers, subject to the journal’s conflict-of-interest and editorial-independence requirements.

Potential reviewers suggested by the authors may also be considered. Reviewers should not have published with any of the co-authors during the past five years, should not be affiliated with the same institution as any of the authors of the submitted manuscript, and should not have any other personal, professional, or financial conflict of interest that could compromise, or reasonably be perceived to compromise, their impartiality. Reviewers must not recommend citations to their own work, the work of close colleagues, the work of another author, or articles published in the journal unless such citations are clearly necessary to improve the quality and scholarly integrity of the manuscript under review. For more details, reviewers can refer to the COPE guidance on citation requests by reviewers .

Reviewers must not use AI or AI-assisted tools (such as ChatGPT) to review submissions or generate peer-review reports. Reviewers are solely responsible for the content of their reports, and using AI technologies for this purpose constitutes a breach of peer-review confidentiality.

Reviewers should maintain a neutral and professional tone and provide constructive criticism that helps the authors improve their work. Derogatory, discriminatory, or otherwise inappropriate comments will not be tolerated. Reviewers must keep the manuscript and all of its contents, including the abstract, confidential. If a review report does not meet the journal’s quality standards, the reviewer may be asked to revise the report, or the report may be disregarded and an additional reviewer may be invited.

Editorial Decision and Revision

Research articles, review articles, and other scholarly manuscripts designated by the journal as peer-reviewed content undergo external peer review and normally receive at least two independent review reports before a final decision is made. Based on the reviewers’ reports, the scientific content of the manuscript, and the journal’s editorial criteria, the responsible editor will communicate one of the following decisions:

• Accept after Minor Revisions: The manuscript is considered suitable for publication in principle, subject to satisfactory completion of the requested minor revisions. Authors are normally given fourteen days to submit the revised manuscript. An extension may be granted upon a reasonable request.
• Reconsider after Major Revisions: The manuscript requires substantial revision before a final decision can be made. Authors must provide a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ and editor’s comments and may provide a reasoned rebuttal where they disagree with a requested revision. Authors are normally given thirty days to submit the revised manuscript. An extension may be granted upon a reasonable request. The revised manuscript may be returned to the original reviewers and/or evaluated by additional reviewers. Further rounds of revision may be requested when necessary to resolve outstanding scientific, methodological, or editorial issues.
• Reject and Encourage Resubmission: A manuscript requiring substantial additional work, analyses, validation, data, or other evidence to support its conclusions may be rejected, with the authors encouraged to submit a substantially revised version once the necessary work has been completed. Any resubmitted manuscript will be treated as a new submission and will undergo a new editorial assessment and, where appropriate, a new peer-review process.
• Reject: The manuscript has serious scientific, methodological, ethical, editorial, or other substantive deficiencies that prevent it from being accepted for publication. The manuscript is rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal in its current form.

Authors must address all reviewer and editor comments in a point-by-point response. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer or editor, they must provide a clear, evidence-based, and reasoned response.

Author Appeals

Authors may appeal a rejection by sending an e-mail to the Editorial Office of the journal. The appeal must provide a detailed scientific and/or procedural justification and should address the relevant reviewers’ and/or editor’s comments point by point. Appeals based solely on disagreement with the editorial outcome, without substantive justification, may not be considered.

The Editor-in-Chief will forward the manuscript, the appeal, and the relevant editorial and peer-review information to an appropriate Editorial Board member who was not involved in the original editorial decision and has no conflict of interest concerning the manuscript. If no appropriate Editorial Board member is available, the Editor-in-Chief will identify a suitable independent external expert. The Editorial Board member or external expert will provide an advisory recommendation and may recommend that the manuscript undergo further peer review, that the editorial decision be reconsidered, or that the original rejection decision be upheld. A rejection decision following completion of the appeal process is final.

In the case of a special issue, the Editor-in-Chief, provided that they were not involved in the original decision and have no conflict of interest, may be asked to review the appeal and provide an advisory recommendation. Where the Editor-in-Chief has a conflict of interest or was involved in the original decision, an independent Editorial Board member or suitable external expert will be appointed to consider the appeal. The person considering the appeal must not have participated in the original editorial decision. A rejection decision following completion of the appeal process is final.