Peer Review

 

All articles submitted in the journal„Herald of Oriental Studies“ undergo the process of peer review.

- The Associate Editor checks the relevance of the submitted article to the journal’s scope and content, the requirements for the submitted article and handles it over to the editorial board, which decides upon the research quality of the manuscript.

- If the submitted article meets the aforementioned criteria, the Editor appoints a reviewer who can evaluate professionally the submitted article based on similarity of his or her research interests. The manuscript is given to two anonymous reviewers for expertise.

The reviewing usually takes 1-2 months.

- The Journal uses the practice of “double blind” peer-review system. Submitted article is assigned to the reviewers without identifying the authors’ names, while the reviewers’ names and their institutional affiliations are not provided to the author.

- Review process is external. The reviewer cannot be represented by the author or co-author of the peer-reviewed manuscripts, as well as an employee of the organization where they are affiliated.

- The reviewer evaluates the topicality and novelty of the research results submitted, their theoretical and practical significance, references. The reviewer provides the editor with an overall recommendation:

1) The article should be accepted

2) The article needs revisions and may be resubmitted

3) The article should be rejected (mentioning the reasons).

- The author of the submitted article is given an opportunity to read the text of the review which is e-mailed to the author; the expert remains anonymous.

If the reviewer recommends major or minor revisions, the editor sends a decision letter to the author suggesting that recommendations should be accepted for a revised variant of the article or rejected argumentatively.

-The list of reviewer’s recommendations that may be the reason for the rejection of the manuscript:

- Absence of references;

- Material reduplication (publishing the material or its major part in other journals);

- Absence or uncertainty of the conclusion;

- Absence of abstract, keywords and other obligatory parts within the structure of the article.

- If the article is rejected, the information containing comments is e-mailed to the author.

- The final decision on publication is made by the editorial board taking into consideration the reviewer’s recommendations, research significance of the paper and its fitting to the journal scope. The rejected article cannot be resubmitted to the journal.

- When the editorial board’s decision on publication is made, the executive secretary informs the author about the decision and probable date of publication.

Original reviews are kept in the editorial office of the journal and publisher for 3 years.

 

Appendix

The procedure of appeal against the editorial board’s decision

The author has the right to appeal against the editorial board’s decision in case of the rejection of the article or the necessity to make revisions in accordance with the reviewer’s advice. In such cases the author can challenge the decision with reasonable argument addressing the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief should be able to justify the prompt response and ensure to take the complaint further. At the concerned Editor’s discretion, the article will be forwarded to additional reviewers or the author will be informed about the correctness of the reviewers’ critical comments and the necessity to make corresponding revisions.

The article is rejected without the right to resubmission in case of proved plagiarism or fabrication of the results.