Peer review procedure

Preliminary review. Upon receipt of the article, it is examined for compliance with the formal design requirements (relevance to the journal’s scope, text formatting, abstract structure, references list, article intelligence, observance of scientific prose style, etc.) In addition, submitted materials are subject to plagiarism check. Upon a favorable result, the article is submitted for review. If there are any comments at the stage of primary control, the article may be rejected or sent back to the author for revision pursuant to the Requirements for Articles. In this case, the date of receipt will be considered the date of resubmission of the revised article.

Peer review. The goal of peer review is to improve the quality of scholarly articles published in the journal via evaluating papers by highly qualified experts.

The peer review procedure is anonymous for both the reviewer and the authors and is carried out by independent reviewers (double-blind review: neither the authors’ nor peer reviewers’ identities are shared with each other).

All reviewers shall comply with ethics requirements by the Committee on Publication Ethics and be objective and impartial.

A reviewer shall asses the following:

- correspondence of the article’s title with its content and content with the journal’s scope;

- relevance of the topic under consideration;

- analysis of related publications;

- methodological research basis;

- coverage of the article’s topic in accordance with the set goal;

- reliability of conclusions;

- adherence to scientific ethics, the correctness of references, in particular, the presence of works by authors mentioned in the text;

- original contribution to the solution of the problem concerned, etc.

Scientific articles designed in strict accordance with the Requirements for Articles, which have passed preliminary review, are allowed for review.

If the above requirements are met, the manuscript is forward to the assistant editor of the editorial board.

The assistant editor removes information about the author/authors from the article.

Reviewers (both editorial board members and external ones) are domestic and foreign scientists who have relevant scholarly contributions and at least one article published in the journals included in the List over the past 3 years or Scopus or WoS foreign journals, or have monographs or monograph sections published by international publishing houses of “A”, “B” or “C” categories following Research School for Socio-Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment (SENSE).

On behalf of the editors, a letter is sent to such a scientist with a request for review. An article with deleted information about the author(s) and a standard review form are attached to the letter. An external reviewer is usually chosen randomly based on their current load and with their consent.

The reviewer who received the coded article, following the outcome of its meticulous analysis, fills out a standard review form and chooses one of the recommendation options: to recommend the article for publication; return the article to the author/authors for revision and further review; reject the article.

In case of refusal to publish or the need to revise the manuscript, the reviewer shall provide a written and reasoned explanation of such a decision.

Within two weeks, reviewers provide the editorial staff with reviews meeting the specific requirements signed with a conventional or digital electronic signature.

Editorial board review. After receiving a review, the assistant editor proposes an article for consideration by the editorial board which meets once a month and renders one of the following decisions via open voting:

- approve the article for printing without changes;

- return the article to the authors for revision with a subsequent repeated review;

- reject the article.

Further work with the article approved for publication is carried out by the editorial and publishing department of the research organization unit pursuant to the technological process of preparing the journal issue.

The editorial board decision is sent to the author(s). Articles to be revised are sent to the author listed first in the list of co-authors, together with the review, which contains specific recommendations for improving the article. Information about the reviewer is removed from the review before it is sent to the author. The editorial board guarantees reviewers’ anonymity.

The revised article is sent for re-review. In case of a repeated negative outcome, the article is rejected and not subject to further consideration.

The editors do not enter into a discussion with the authors of rejected articles.

Reviews of each article are kept in the editorial office for at least three years from the date of publication of the specific issue.