|
|
 |
Peer Review PolicyRefereeing Process and Peer ReviewOnce a manuscript is submitted for publication, the manuscript is checked by the journal’s AEM Editorial Office to ensure that it is suitable to go through the normal peer review process. Once this is done, the manuscript is sent to an Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief assigns an Associate Editor, who will handle the manuscript based on its subject and is not from the same Institute as any of the manuscript’s authors.If the Associate Editor finds that the manuscript may not be of sufficient quality to go through the normal peer review process, or that the subject of the manuscript may not be appropriate for the journal’s scope, the manuscript shall be rejected with no further processing. If the Associate Editor finds that the submitted manuscript is of sufficient quality and falls within the scope of the journal, they should assign the manuscript to at least two reviewers for peer-review who make recommendations on the suitability of the articles for publication. When all reviewers have submitted their reports, the Associate Editor submits the report to the Editor-in-Chief based on the reviewers' comments. The Editor-in-Chief can make one of the following editorial recommendations based on the Associate Editor’s report:
If the Editor-in-Chief recommends “Accept”, the manuscript is accepted for publication. If the Editor-in-Chief recommends “Minor Revision”, the authors are notified to prepare and submit a final copy of their manuscript with the required minor revisions suggested by the reviewers along with a detailed reply to the reviewer comments. The Editor-in-Chief as well as the Associate Editor reviews the revised manuscript after the minor revisions have been made by the authors. Once the Editor-in-Chief is satisfied with the final manuscript, the manuscript is accepted. If the Editor-in-Chief recommends “Major Revision”, the recommendation is communicated to the authors. The authors are expected to revise their manuscripts in accordance with the changes recommended by the reviewers and to submit their revised manuscript in a timely manner. Authors are requested to upload a detailed reply to the reviewer comments along with the revised version of their manuscript. Once the revised manuscript is submitted, the Editor-in-Chief can then make an editorial recommendation which can be “Accept”, “Minor Revision”, “Major Revision”, or “Reject.” If the Editor-in-Chief recommends “Reject”, the rejection is immediate. Also, if the majority of the reviewers recommend rejecting the manuscript, the rejection is immediate. The editorial workflow gives the Editor-in-Chief the authority to reject any manuscript because of inappropriateness of its subject, lack of quality, incorrectness of its results, duplicate submission, plagiarism, and gift authorship. When split recommendations have been made by two reviewers, the Associate Editor can assign a third reviewer of the manuscript. This is to ensure a high-quality, fair, and unbiased peer-review process of every manuscript submitted to the journal, since any manuscript must be recommended by two or more reviewers. We are committed to providing timely assessment of articles, and authors are informed of the publication decision as soon as possible. It should be noted that our refereeing process, common to many other publishers, is single-blind, that is, the reviewers remain anonymous and their identities are not released to authors. The reviewers, however, are informed of the authors’ names and affiliations. Additional InformationEditorial Board Members or Associate Editors are required to declare any competing interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists. In addition, they should exclude themselves from handling manuscripts in cases where there is a competing interest.Where Associate Editors are on the author list, they must declare this in the competing interests section on the submitted manuscript. If they are one of the authors or have any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript, another Associate Editor will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review. These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript. Editorial Board Members are welcome to submit their papers to AEM. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and Editorial Board Member status has no bearing on editorial consideration. Submissions should be made online at https://www.editorialmanager.com/j-aem. Please see the Submission Guidelines put on a top page at https://www.editorialmanager.com/j-aem. |