All papers submitted to the “International Law Journal” journal pass the procedure of reviewing according to the order established by editorial board.
Peer-Reviewing order
- Members of the editorial board and leading Russian and international experts in corresponding areas of life sciences, invited as independent readers, perform peer reviews. Editor-in-chief, deputy editor-in-chief or science editor choose readers for peer review.
- Reviewer has an option to abnegate the assessment should any conflict of interests arise that may affect perception or interpretation of the manuscript. Upon the scrutiny, the reviewer is expected to present the editorial board with one of the following recommendations: – to accept the paper in its present state; – to invited the author to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before final decision is reached; – that final decision be reached following further reviewing by another specialist; – to reject the manuscript outright.
- Primary examination is conducted by the editors of the editorial and publishing department of the “International Law Journal” journal. During the primary examination only supporting documents are considered, the relevance of the scientific article to the journal profile, rules and requirements is evaluated, set by the editorial board of the journal, the inspection of scientific article on uniqueness is carried out. If in the reviewing, “checking for plagiarism” and editing processes reveal instances of plagiarism or false references, the article will be rejected for reviewing, nor will this author’s other articles be accepted for further reviewing process.
- In the case of the manuscript relevance to the journal profile, established rules and requirements, it is accepted by the editorial board and is sent for the reviewing. Otherwise the article is rejected without further reviewing.
- A bilateral anonymous (“blind”) peer review method is mandatory for processing of all scientific manuscripts submitted to the editorial stuff. This implies that neither the reviewer is aware of the authorship of the manuscript, nor the author maintains any contact with the reviewer.
- The reviewer is chosen among the members of the editorial board as well as invited reviewers or the leading experts in the profile of the given article. The decision to select a reviewer for the examination of the article is made by the editor-in-chief of the journal or the editor in charge.
- Reviewers prepare reviews of journal articles on a voluntary basis. Reviewers have the right to decline invitations to review a particular article at their discretion, including manuscripts in which they feel unqualified. Reviewers should submit their reviews in a scanned form.
- The deadline for writing the review is established by the agreement with the reviewer in accordance with the reviewing contract, but should not exceed 2 months.
- The information or ideas obtained by reviewers in the course of peer review of articles should be confidential and may not be used for their personal interests. Expert assessment should be objective and clear with specific arguments and suggestions for improving the article, even if the manuscript, in their opinion, cannot be published.
- Reviewers in their reviews have to determine the possible borrowing or a repeat of previously presented research findings according to the author and to draw the editor-in-chief’s attention to any significant similarity between the considered articles and other publications, and official papers which they know.
- The reviewer makes a conclusion about the possibility of publishing an article:
- “recommended for publication”;
- “recommended taking into account the correction of the comments made by the reviewer”;
- “article must be sent for revision”;
- “not recommended for publication”.
- The review should reveal the relevance of the presented material, the degree of scientific novelty of the research; determine the compliance with the proposed publication of the text with the general profile of the publication and artistic level of presentation (style, narrative literacy, linguistic culture, etc.).
- If the review contains recommendations to revise or modify the manuscript, the Associate Editor sends the text of the review to the Author and suggests considering them when preparing a new version of the manuscript or refute them (in part or in whole) with reason. The revised paper should be returned within 30-60 days (depending on the number of recommendations and their complexity). It should be accompanied by a cover letter containing replies to all comments and clarifying all revisions in the manuscript (as a separate file, highlighting all modifications). The finalized manuscript is resent for peer reviewing, an answer to the Reviewer being attached (e.g. “Dear Reviewer…. Thank you for your careful reading of my/our paper…I/we tried to consider all the comments… but at the same time…”). The receipt date will be the date when the revised manuscript is returned. All manuscripts are sent to Reviewers for re-review and approval.
- In case of a refusal by authors from article correction, they should in written or oral form report to the editorial board about the refusal to publish an article. If authors do not return the corrected version for 3 months since the opinion being sent, editorial board annuls the article from publication reserve even if there is no refusal from correction from the authors. In such cases authors are reported that their article is removed from the register due to the correction period expiration. Decision about the refusal of publication of an article is made at the conference of the editorial board based on the reviewers’ recommendations. Article which is not recommended by the decision of editorial board is not accepted for the second review. Information about the refusal of publication is sent to the author via e-mail.
- If an author and reviewers have insolvable contradictions about the article, the editorial board has a right to send the article for the additional review. In case of conflict the editor-in-chief makes a decision on the editorial board conference.
- The articles are reviewed and accepted only after at least two positive reviews of three reviewers
- After making a decision by the chief editorial board to admit the article for publication, the author is informed about it.
- Kindly note that positive review does not guarantee the acceptance, as final decision in all cases lies with the editorial board. By his authority, editor-in-chief rules final solution of every conflict.
- The editorial board reviews all manuscripts to offer an expert judgement. All reviewers are recognized scholars who have published their own papers with the same subject matter within the last three years. The reviews are kept by editorial staff for five years.
- Publishing Edition sends to the authors copies of reviews or a reasoned refusal.
- The content of each issue is approved at the meeting of the chief editorial board of the journal, where taking into account all the reviewers’ opinions the question of acceptance for publication of each article is settled.
- The originals of reviews are kept in editorial office of the journal for 3 years, including to provide the competent authorities on request.