Editorial Workflow
All submitted manuscripts undergo extensive peer-review process and circulate among Author, Editorial Office, Editor/Associate Editor, Reviewer, and Publisher before final publication. The whole process consists of following editorial workflow:
All steps, from manuscript submission to final publication, are performed in the Manuscript Handler, a ResearchersLinks Project. All submitted manuscripts are initially quality controlled by the Editorial Office for manuscript formatting, reference provision, plagiarism checking and completion of all necessary files required to perform review process. Once initial quality controls are passed, the manuscript is forwarded to appropriate Editor/Associate Editor depending upon the institution and previous co-publication record of the author with the Editor/Associate Editor. Editor/Associate Editor decides the initiation of review process or decline to do so based on the quality of the presented work and scope of the journal.
If Editor/Associate Editor finds the manuscript of high quality and is within the aims and scope of the journal, the manuscript is forwarded to at least 3 expert reviewers in the field. Reviewers are requested to (i) assess each section of the manuscript for values ranging from 0 to 5, (ii) to provide comments to Author (iii) comments to Editor, (iv) recommendations (accept, reject, minor revision, or major revision) and (v) willingness to review the revise version of this manuscript in case of minor and major revision.
Based on the reviewers’ comments, suggestions and overall assessments, Editor/Associate Editor recommends one of the following options:
(i) accept, (ii) reject, (iii) minor revision, (iv) major revision, (v) returned.
Reviewers can also upload a review report in the form of an attachment if the suggestions were made in a word document or in the manuscript directly.
In case of acceptance, Author is notified and the Publisher processes the manuscript for formatting, copy-editing, proofreading, reference linking, metadata generation for indexing and publication purposes. The rejected manuscripts are closed, whereas, manuscripts with minor or major revision are require appropriate actions from the Author for re-consideration by the Editor/Associate Editor. The Editor/Associate Editor either makes final recommendations or considers another round of review process.
Editors/Associate Editor is final and decisive authority to make any recommendations on submitted manuscripts without involvement of the Editorial Office. This is mainly due to the fact that Editors/Associate Editors are leading personnel in the field and they make their recommendations on the bases of reviewers’ assessment. Also Editor/Associate Editor can’t play external reviewers’ roles, except in occasional cases, to have fair, highly professional and dynamic peer-review system.
ResearchersLinks performs single-blinded peer-review process, which means that reviewers know the authors whereas authors are not informed who have reviewed their manuscripts.
Though sometimes tedious and time consuming, reviewing a manuscript is also a privilege. ResearchersLinks has dedicated tab to acknowledge the reviewers who have reviewed the manuscripts in last 6 months. More information on reviewers’ role can be found here (http://researcherslinks.com/contents/reviewers).
