Aim and Scope

Aim and Scope

SAHAMATI Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Development (SJMRD)

SJMRD is the official journal of SAHAMATI Nepal. SJMRD is an international, peer reviewed, open access, referred, indexed, annual online journal. This gives platform to researchers, authors from multidisciplinary subject areas for publishing the original research and review articles for the betterment of the society and nation.

SCOPE

The journal publishes annual issues in various disciplines limited to:

  • Education, arts and humanities, health (Medical Science, Nursing and Pharmacy),
  •  Business,  hospitality management
  • Applied Sciences (applied biology, applied chemistry, applied physics, and applied engineering)
  • Applied Biological Sciences (Agriculture, Animal Science, Veterinary, Forestry, Environment Science, Food Science).

The journal primarily has, as its audience, scientists, academicians, practitioners of various fields, policy makers, health advocates, graduate students, and other individuals interested in pushing the frontiers of developing innovative ideas for social and global transformation.

Editorial Board

Patron

Karuna Sagar Subedi

President

SAHAMATI, Gaidakot

Email: sahamatico@gmail.com

 

Managing editors

Subash Subedi, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist and Plant Pathologist
Nepal Agricultural Research Council, Nepal

Email: subedi.subash1@gmail.com

 

Jiban Shrestha
Scientist and Plant Breeder
Nepal Agricultural Research Council, Nepal
Email:jibshrestha@gmail.com

Author Guidelines

About

SAHAMATI Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Development (SJMRD) is a peer reviewed open access scientific journal published annually in December by SAHAMATI Nepal. Manuscripts of any research and review articles on the journal publish annual issues in various disciplines limited to:

  • Education, arts and humanities, health (Medical Science, Nursing and Pharmacy),
  •  Business,  hospitality management
  • Applied Sciences (applied biology, applied chemistry, applied physics, and applied engineering),
  • Applied Biological Sciences (Agriculture, Animal Science, Veterinary, Forestry, Environment Science, Food Science).

The journal primarily has, as its audience, scientists, academicians, practitioners of various fields, policy makers, health advocates, graduate students, and other individuals interested in pushing the frontiers of developing innovative ideas for social and global transformation.

Publication Formats

§  Review Articles,

§  Research notes ,

§  Critical review papers,

§  Research Articles.

Submission

Electronic Submission

All manuscripts must be submitted via Editorial Office through online submission link. Manuscripts submitted under multiple authorship are reviewed on the assumption that all listed authors concur in the submission and are responsible for its content; they must have agreed to its publication and have given the corresponding author the authority to act on their behalf in all matters pertaining to publication. The corresponding author is responsible for informing the coauthors of the manuscript status throughout the submission, review, and production process.

Electronic Formats Allowed 

We accept submission of text, tables and figures as separate files or as a composite file. For your initial submission, we recommend you upload your entire manuscript, including tables and figures, as a single PDF file. If you are invited to submit a revised manuscript, please provide us with individual files: an editable text and publication-quality figures. Text files can be submitted in the following formats: MS Word – standard DOCUMENT (.DOC).

Tables should be submitted as MS Word. Please note that a straight Excel file is not an acceptable format.  Graphics files can be submitted in any of the following graphic formats: JPG; TIFF; GIF. Please note that Power point and PDF files are not accepted. Post-acceptance, text files of the revised manuscript and tables are required for use in the production. Authors should clearly indicate the location(s) of tables and figures in the text if these elements are given separately or at the end of the manuscript. If this information is not provided to the editorial office, we will assume that they should be left at the end of the text.

First-time Submission of Manuscript

It is important that authors include a cover letter with their manuscript. Please explain why you consider your manuscript to be suitable for publication in SJMRD Journal, why your paper will inspire the other members of your field, and how will it drive research forward. status: new, reviewed or accepted (with reference ID if reviewed or accepted). § number of attached files, if there is more than one § contact address, telephone/fax numbers of the corresponding author § e-mail of the corresponding author § full list of authors with affiliations § full title of article and short title § your full name (submitted by) §The letter should contain all important details such as:

Corresponding author must mention ORCID (visit this site for getting this ID, https://orcid.org/) as for example  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7848-5824  just after email address.

The cover letter should explicitly state that the manuscript (or one with substantially the same content, by any of the authors) has not been previously published in any language anywhere and that it is not under simultaneous consideration or in press by another journal. If related work has been submitted, then we may require a preprint to be made available. Reviewers will be asked to comment on the overlap between the related submissions. Manuscripts that have been previously rejected, or withdrawn after being returned for modification, may be resubmitted if the major criticisms have been addressed. The cover letter must state that the manuscript is a resubmission, and the former manuscript number should be provided. To ensure fair and objective decision-making, authors must declare any associations that pose a conflict of interest in connection with evaluated manuscripts (see Editorial Policy for details). Authors may suggest up to two referees not to use, and in such cases additional justification should be provided in the cover letter. Authors are encouraged to recommend up to five reviewers who are not members of their institution(s) and have never been associated with them or their laboratory (ies); please provide contact information for suggested reviewers. The Editors reserve the right to select expert reviewers at their discretion.

The corresponding author must signed ⇓ License to publish Agreement form at the time of submission of his/her manuscript.

Submission of Revised Articles

Resubmitted manuscripts should be accompanied by a letter outlining a point-by-point response to Journal Editor’s and reviewers’ comments and detailing the changes made to the manuscript. A copy of the original manuscript should be included for comparison if the Journal Editor requests one. If it is the first revision, authors need to return the revised manuscript within 30 days; if it is the second revision, authors need to return the revised manuscript within 15 days. Additional time for resubmission must be requested in advance. If the above mentioned deadlines are not met, the manuscript will be treated as a new submission. For resubmitted manuscripts, please provide us with an editable text and publication-quality figures: Tables also need to be included within an editable article file or be submitted separately as editable files. SJMRD Supply any figures as separate high-resolution, print-ready digital versions. In addition to the editorial remarks, authors are asked to take care that they have prepared the revised version according to the Journal’s style. Please adopt numbered citation (citation-sequence) style referencing.

Submission of undertaking: 

The all concerned authors are bound to submit an undertaking duly signed by them, which shows that this paper was not submitted elsewhere and was also not plagiarized.

Please see the Copyright section for copyright information and the license to publish agreement required for all submissions.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  2. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  3. Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  4. The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  5. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  6. If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

Submission of Paper: 

When submitting the paper, the authors should provide the contact details (names, affiliations and e-mail addresses) of at least three potential reviewers. The reviewers should be experts in the corresponding field of research, and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the paper. The peer reviewers should not be from the same institutions as the authors of the paper. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article’s publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. Authors should take responsibility for ensuring that the articles derived from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution. The corresponding authors should submit their manuscript along with cover letter. ⇓ Cover letterThe paper must be submitted electronically to the organizational email address.

Criteria for publication

Contributions falling into the following categories will be considered for publication and are accepted on the understanding that they have not been published previously, nor are under consideration for publication in any other journal. This policy on redundant publication extends to overlapping or incremental submissions (salami publication) where data from essentially the same experiment is spread across numerous papers: the practice is discouraged, and such submissions are unlikely to be considered for publication.

The criteria for an article to be accepted and published are:

  • The article should be written  in  standard English.
  • The article should be written following the “guidelines for manuscript.”
  • The article should be written in correlation with its title and abstract.
  • The results should be supported with adequate and appropriate discussion.
  • Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion.
  • The article has not been published elsewhere.
  • The article should be of interest to the broad community.
  • The article should be original research and scientifically effective.
  • The article contents must not be plagiarized.
Preparation and organization of the manuscript

Preparation of Manuscripts

It is essential that contributors prepare their manuscripts according to the instructions and specifications presented below. General rules for writing is that the work must demonstrate its novelty, importance to the field of animal migration and its interest to biologists in general. Conclusions must be justified by the study; please make your argumentation complete and be self-critical as you review your drafts. The Journal encourages the submission of both substantial full-length bodies of work and shorter manuscripts that report novel findings that might be based on a more limited range of experiments. There are no specific length restrictions for the overall manuscript or individual sections; however, we urge the authors to present and discuss their findings in a concise and accessible manner. Use simple, declarative sentences and commonly understood terms; avoid long sentences and idle words. Please use active voice while writing your manuscript; e.g. ‘we measured snout-vent length’ rather than ‘snout-vent length was measured. We recommend that for clarity you use the past tense to narrate particular events in the past, including the procedures, observations, and data of the study that you are reporting. Use the present tense for your own general conclusions, the conclusions of previous researchers, and generally accepted facts. Thus, most of the Abstract, Methods, and Results should be in the past tense, and most of the Introduction and some of the Discussion should be in the present tense. Editors may make suggestions for how to improve clarity and readability, as well as to strengthen the argument.

 Organization of the Manuscript

All contents in article must be written in English. Papers must be an original work and should not be submitted elsewhere for the publication. Before submission, manuscripts should be reviewed critically by two peer reviewers and revised accordingly. Manuscript should be neatly typed, single spaced (along with tables, figures and references) on A4 paper with 1 inch margin at the top, bottom and left side. Manuscripts should generally be organized in the following order of Title and contact information, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods (or Methodology), Results and Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgments and finally References. The maximum length of the paper must be limited to 20 pages, including tables, graphs and references. The whole manuscript should be in 12 font size (except title of paper, abstract, tables and figures). The font should be in New Times Roman. The manuscript should be submitted to the Editors-in-Chief of the Journal.

Title of the paper: 

The title of the paper should be clear, descriptive and informative. The first page should contain the full title in sentence case not exceeding 16 words. The authors’ identification should include the author’s name (do not use abbreviations), title or designation, organization, address, telephone, fax and email Id. The font size of title is 16 and font is Times New Roman. The font size of author name is 12, and font is Times New Roman. The affiliation, organization, address, telephone, fax, email Id, ORCID ID, copyright, licensing information should be in 11 font size and font is Times New Roman .

Abstract: 

The abstract should be clear, descriptive and not longer than 250 words. It should be citation free and should concisely state the major objective, methodology, major findings and conclusion but should not include diagram, footnotes, equations, or any parenthetical references. The font size of abstract is 10 and font is Times New Roman.

Key words:

Key words should normally 4-6 keywords. The font size of abstract is 12 and font is Times New Roman.

Introduction:

The introduction should be should be succinct and with no subheadings. In this section background information, relevant review of literature and objective of the research should be given. Statements must be supported by citations whenever possible. It should give appropriate background and explain the things that are proposed. It should include short introduction to justify the research and relevant reviews and state the objectives clearly.

Materials and Methods: 

Detail information on relevant materials and methods used including sampling methods, experimental design, treatments, plot size and any other techniques used in research as well as the year and place of conducting the research should be provided. The statistical methods and tools used in study should be clearly mentioned.

Results and Discussion: 

Results should be presented with clarity and precision. It should be written in the past tense when describing findings in the authors’ experiments. Previously published findings should be written in the present tense.

Discussion should interpret the findings in view of the results obtained in this and past studies on the topic. The results and discussion sections can include subheadings. When appropriate, the two sections can be combined.

Conclusion: 

All relevant items achieved in the researched area should be mentioned in the conclusion. The conclusion should be given after the results and discussion section. 

Acknowledgements:

 Acknowledgements, if any, should be given to funding agencies, organization and key person.

Reference Citation:

The references should be arranged alphabetically and should follow the American Psychological Association (APA) style. References should also indicate the differences in styles for books, journals, newspapers and other published and unpublished materials. The references should be cited within in the body of paper; otherwise, these references must not come under the reference list. For detailed information, please see the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition (2010); http://www.apastyle.org/ and http://blog.apastyle.org/.Visit the link for APA referencing style: i) Taylor and Francis Standard Reference Style:APA, ii) Referencing guides.Users of Mendeley Desktop can easily install the reference style for this journal by clicking the following link:
http://open.mendeley.com/use-citation-style/journal-of-maize-resea-nepal/

When preparing manuscript, the author will be able to select this style using the Mendeley plug-ins for Microsoft Word or LibreOffice.

All authors should include the DOIs of article while writing references in articles for SJMRD Journal.

Tables:

Tables should be self-explanatory. Every table must have a descriptive title and if numerical measurements are given, the units should be included in the column heading. Tables should be created using the table function. Tables are to be typed  single-spaced throughout, numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and supplied with a title and footnotes. The same data should not be presented in both a table and a graph or repeated in the text.  Symbol like single asterisk  and double asterisks (**) should be used to indicate statistical significance and have priority in this order to show 5 and 1% levels of significance, respectively. Do not repeat information in the text presented in charts or graph. It is preferable to use 10 font size and bold table heading. The title of Table and Figure should be in 12 font, the contents within title should be in 10 font and Times New Roman.

Figure legends:

Figures should be typed in numerical and Arabic numerals should be used to designate figure numbers and upper-case letters for their parts (Figure 1A). Begin each legend with a title and include sufficient description so that the figure is understandable without reference to the text of the manuscript. Graphics should be prepared with applications capable of generating high-resolution JPEG before pasting into the Microsoft Word manuscript file.Do not repeat data both in table and figures. Either use table, or graph or figure. Each Figure and/or graph with a number and the proper title heading should be drawn or prepared below the graph/figure.

Others:

Heading: Center and capitalize the main heading of the paper. Sub heading should be on separate line and capitalize the first letter of the first word.

Scientific names:

The scientific name must be given in italic and given with authority. The first letter of the word of cultivar must be capitalized

Trade or brand names: 

The first letter of trade or brand names should be capitalized.

Abbreviations and Units of measurement:

Visit below PDF link to see list of abbreviations and units of measurement for this journal

⇓ Abbreviations & Units of measurement

Periods:

Do not put periods after title and key words. Periods are necessary at the end of table and figure heading.

Formulae: 

All formulae and equations in the paper should be worked out by means of the programme ‘WORD Equation’.  The meaning of all symbols should be given immediately after the equation where these symbols are first used. Equations should be numbered by Arabic numerals, serially in brackets, at the right-hand side. Each equation must be mentioned in the text as Eq. (1), Eq. (2), etc.

Page setup: 

Font: Times New Roman, Size: 12 points,  Paper: A4 size, Margin: width at 2.54 cm. Spacing: Single, Text Size: Not exceeding 5000 words

The author’s address:

On a separate sheet of paper, the author should include full name (co-authors’ full names), including all academic and scientific degrees and detailed address of the institution with postcode, phone, fax numbers and e-mail address. The author who is responsible for any correspondence with the journal has to be indicated clearly.

Supplemental Materials

We encourage authors to submit essential supplementary files that additionally support the authors’ conclusions along with their manuscripts (the principal conclusions should be fully supported without referral to the supplemental material). Supplemental material will always remain associated with its article and is not subject to any modifications after publication. The decision to publish the material with the article if it is accepted will be made by the Editor. Supporting files of no more than 10 MB in may be submitted in a variety of formats, but should be publication-ready, as these files will Multimedia – Audio/Video/Animations (AVI, MPEG, WAV, Quicktime, animated GIF or Flash) If the software required for users to view/use the supplemental material is not embedded in the file, you are urged to use shareware or generally available/easily accessible programs. To prevent any misunderstandings, we request that authors submit a text file (instruction.txt) containing a brief instruction on how to use the files supplied. All supporting information should be referred to in the manuscript, with titles (and, if desired, legends) for all files listed under the heading ‘Supporting Information’.§ Protocol § Text § Additional Figure or Table § Dataset §be published exactly as supplied. Material must be restricted to large or complex data sets or results that cannot be readily displayed because of space or technical limitations. Material that has been published previously is not acceptable for posting as supplemental material. Supporting files should fall into one of the following categories:

Off-prints:

Every author will receive a free electronic offprint in portable document format (PDF), sent via e-mail as an attachment. Free reprints are also available on the website.

Compliance with these instructions is obligatory for all authors. If a manuscript does not comply exactly with the above requirements, the Editorial Office will not accept it and will return it to the authors without reviewing.

Articles Retraction Procedure: 

Articles are retracted in proven cases of scientific misconduct, major errors – including honest – and various forms of publishing malfeasance listed below. Retractions are not about punishing authors. Retractions are first and foremost about correcting the scientific literature and ensuring the integrity of published research.

Generally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication.

  • Notices of retraction should mention the reasons and basis for the retraction, to distinguish cases of misconduct from those of honest error; they should also specify who is retracting the article. They should be published in all versions of the journal (ie, print and/or electronic). It is helpful to include the authors and title of the retracted article in the retraction heading.
  • Retracted articles should be clearly identified as such in all electronic sources (eg, on the journal Web site and any bibliographic databases). Editors are responsible for ensuring that retractions are labeled in such a way that they are identified by bibliographic databases (which should also include a link to the retracted article). The retraction should appear on all electronic searches for the retracted publication. Journals and publishers should ensure that retracted articles are clearly marked on their own Web sites.
  • Retracted articles should not be removed from printed copies of the journal (eg, in libraries) nor from electronic archives but their retracted status should be indicated as clearly as possible.

This journal considers the following reasons  for concern and potential retraction:

  • Clear evidence that findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error)
  • Findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication)
  • Major plagiarism
  • The reporting of unethical research, the publication of an article that did not have the required ethics committee approval
  • Legal issues pertaining to the content of the article e.g. libellous content
  • Major authorship issues i.e. proven or strongly suspected cases of ghostwriting or sold (‘gift’) authorship
  • The singling out of individuals or organisations for attack
  • Faith issues (e.g. intelligent design)
  • Papers that have made extraordinary claims without concomitant scientific or statistical evidence (e.g. pseudoscience)

Retraction statements should be public and linked to the original, retracted article.

Plagiarism policy:

Manuscripts submitted to SJMRD Journal should be original and must not be plagiarized. Every submitted article is checked for plagiarism through ithenticate software. If Similarity Index (SI) of the article is above (excluding references list) 15%, it is sent back to the corresponding author to revise it and bring its SI below 15%, failure of which will result in rejection of article at very first step. If plagiarism is proved after publication of the article, that article will be immediately withdrawn and removed from the website and the concerned authors will be considered ineligible for publication of their articles in this journal for five years.

Publication Fees: 

Currently this journal is published by SAHAMATI Nepal and it offers authors no publishing charges, no proofreading charges, no page charges and fast publication times. The partnership publisher may charge for article processing and subscription of the journal.

Peer Review Process

Review Process

Invitation to Review

Manuscripts submitted to SJMRD journal are reviewed by at least two experts. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the quality of the manuscript and to provide a recommendation to the external editor on whether a manuscript can be accepted, requires revisions or should be rejected.

We ask invited reviewers to:

  • accept or decline any invitations quickly, based on the manuscript title and abstract;
  • suggest alternative reviewers if an invitation must be declined;
  • Request an extension in case more time is required to compose a report.

As part of the assessment, reviewers will be asked:

  • to rate the originality, significance, quality of the presentation, scientific soundness, interest to the readers, overall merit and English level of the manuscript;
  • to provide an overall recommendation for the publication of the manuscript;
  • to provide a detailed, constructive review report;

Reviewer Guidelines

The Sahamati Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Development (SJMRD) is a peer-review journal. We are sincerely grateful to scholars who give their time to peer-review articles submitted to SJMRD journal. Rigorous peer-review is the corner-stone of high quality academic publishing.

While preparing the reports, Referees are asked to: Describe the quality of the manuscript according to the following criteria

  • Originality of work; has not been published elsewhere in any medium by the authors or anyone else and is not under consideration for publication in any other medium.
  • Scope of the journal
  • Methods of investigation 
  • English language 
  • Backup reading: references

Please rate the following aspects of the manuscript:

  • Originality/Novelty: Is the question original and well defined? Do the results provide an advance in current knowledge?
  • Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses and speculations carefully identified as such?
  • Quality of Presentation: Is the article written in an appropriate way? Are the data and analyses presented appropriately? Are the highest standards for presentation of the results used?
  • Scientific Soundness: is the study correctly designed and technically sound? Are the analyses performed with the highest technical standards? Are the data robust enough to draw the conclusions? Are the methods, tools, software, and reagents described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results?
  • Interest to the Readers: Are the conclusions interesting for the readership of the Journal? Will the paper attract a wide readership, or be of interest only to a limited number of people? (please see the Aims and Scope of the journal)
  • Overall Merit: Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work provide an advance towards the current knowledge? Do the authors have addressed an important long-standing question with smart experiments?
  • English Level: Is the English language appropriate and understandable?

Manuscripts submitted to SJMRD journal should meet the highest standards of publication ethics:

  • Manuscripts should only report results that have not been submitted or published before, even in part.
  • Manuscripts must be original and should not reuse text from another source without appropriate citation.
  • For biological studies, the studies reported should have been carried out in accordance with generally accepted ethical research standards.

General Expectations

  1. Please, DO NOT put your name, affiliation or address in the review
  2. Describe the significance that the work has for the scientific community,
  3. Inform us whether we should consider the manuscript further and what should be done in order to make it publishable (if that is possible),
  4. Comment on technical aspects of the paper, such as the statistical analyses,
  5.  Evaluate the reliability of the results and validity of the conclusions,
  6. Evaluate the authors’ experimental or theoretical approach to the discussed problem(s),
  7. Comment on whether the manuscript presents the most recent literature on the topic discussed,
  8. Comment on the originality of the presented work,
  9. While preparing the reports, we ask our Referees to:

Please note that accepted papers will undergo language editing by native English speakers. Incorrect grammar, style or punctuation should not constitute sufficient reason to reject a paper if it is still intelligible for the reviewer and its content warrants publication from a scientific point of view.

Double-blind peer review guidelines

For this journal that uses double-blind peer review, the identities of both reviewers and authors are concealed from each other throughout the review. To facilitate this, authors must ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in such a way that they do not reveal their identities to reviewers, either directly or indirectly.

Please therefore ensure that the following items are present in your submission and are provided as separate files:

Title Page

The title page will remain separate from the manuscript throughout the peer review process and will not be sent to the reviewers. It should include:

  • The manuscript title
  • All authors’ names and affiliations
  • A complete address for the corresponding author, including an e-mail address
  • Acknowledgements
  • Conflict of interest statement

Anonymised manuscript

Please remove any identifying information, such as authors’ names or affiliations, from your manuscript before submission.

As well as removing names and affiliations under the title within the manuscript, other steps need to be taken to ensure the manuscript is correctly prepared for double-blind peer review.  The key points to consider are:

  • Use the third person to refer to work the authors have previously published. For example, write ‘Jha and Subedi (2015) have demonstrated’ rather than ‘we/the authors have previously demonstrated.
  • Make sure that figures and tables do not contain any reference to author affiliations
  • Exclude acknowledgements and any references to funding sources.  Use the title page, which is not sent to reviewers, to detail these and to declare any potential conflicts of interest to the editor.

Conducting the Review

Peer review is the collaborative process that allows manuscripts submitted to a journal to be evaluated and commented upon by independent experts within the same field of research. Upon receipt, manuscripts are assessed for their suitability for publication by the editorial staff. Only the manuscripts meeting the journal’s general criteria for consideration are sent out for review. Reviewing needs to be conducted confidentially, the articles should not be disclosed to a third party.

Timely Review Reports

SJMRD aims to provide an efficient and high quality publishing service to authors and to the scientific community. We ask reviewers to assist by providing review reports in a timely manner. Please contact the editorial office if you require an extension to the review deadline.

Peer-review publication policies

All contributions submitted to this journal that are selected for peer review are sent to at least one, but usually two or more, independent reviewers, selected by the editors. Authors are welcome to suggest suitable independent reviewers and may also request that the journal excludes one or two individuals or laboratories. The journal sympathetically considers such requests and usually honours them, but the editor’s decision on the choice of referees is final.

Editors, authors and reviewers are required to keep confidential all details of the editorial and peer review process on submitted manuscripts. Unless otherwise declared as a part of open peer review, the peer review process is confidential and conducted anonymously; identities of reviewers are not released. Reviewers must maintain confidentiality of manuscripts. If a reviewer wishes to seek advice from colleagues while assessing a manuscript, the reviewer must consult with the editor and should ensure that confidentiality is maintained and that the names of any such colleagues are provided to the journal with the final report. Regardless of whether a submitted manuscript is eventually published, correspondence with the journal, referees’ reports and other confidential material must not be published, disclosed or otherwise publicised without prior written consent. Reviewers should be aware that it is our policy to keep their names confidential and that we do our utmost to ensure this confidentiality. We cannot, however, guarantee to maintain this confidentiality in the face of a successful legal action to disclose identity.

The publisher reserves the right to contact funders, regulatory bodies, journals and the authors’ institutions in cases of suspected research or publishing misconduct.

Peer-Review Procedure

All manuscripts sent for publication in our journals are strictly and thoroughly peer-reviewed by experts (this includes research and review articles, spontaneous submissions, and invited papers). The Managing Editor of the journal will perform an initial check of the manuscript’s suitability upon receipt. The Editorial Office will then organize the peer-review process performed by independent experts and collect at least two review reports per manuscript. We ask our authors for adequate revisions (with a second round of peer-review if necessary) before a final decision is made. The final decision is made by the academic editor (usually the Editor-in-Chief of a journal or the Guest Editor of a Special Issue). Accepted articles are copy-edited and English-edited.

Note that your recommendation is visible only to journal editors, not to the authors.

The reviewers should reject the manuscripts if they observed below faults;

Mismatch with the journal

  • The manuscript does not make a contribution to new knowledge in the discipline or the application of knowledge
  • Manuscripts that lie outside the stated aims and scope of the journal
  • Topics that are not of interest to the journal’s readership
  • Manuscripts that do not follow the format specified by the journal

Flaws in study design

  • Poorly formulated research question
  • Choice of a weak or unreliable method
  • Choice of an incorrect method or model
  • Inappropriate statistical analysis
  • Unreliable or incomplete data
  • Inappropriate or suboptimal instrumentation
  • Small or inappropriately chosen sample

Poor writing and organization

  • Introduction that does not establish the background of the problem studied
  • Inadequate description of methods
  • Discussion that only repeats the results but does not interpret them
  • Insufficient explanation of the rationale for the study
  • Insufficient literature review
  • Conclusions that do not appear to be supported by the study data

Inadequate preparation of the manuscript

  • Failure to follow the journal’s Instructions for Authors
  • Sentences that are not clear and concise
  • Title, abstract are not persuasive
  • Wordiness and excessive use of jargon
  • Poor grammar or spelling mistakes
  • Poorly designed tables or figures

After reviewing the manuscripts carefully the reviewers should make  their recommendations as below;

a) Rejected due to poor quality, or out of scope

b) Accept without revision

c) Accept but needs revision (either major, moderate or minor)

In the latter case, clearly identify what revision is required, and indicate to the editor whether or not you would be happy to review the revised articles.

During the manuscripts evaluation process, the reviewers should follow and fulfill the “Review Form” and it should be sent to editorial office along with  revised manuscripts.

  • Click below to download form:

IF YOU CANNOT JUDGE ALL PARTS, PLEASE, INDICATE WHICH CHAPTERS SHOULD BE REFEREED BY ANOTHER REVIEWER