Internal review (preliminary editorial assessment)

All manuscripts received by the editorial office are checked by the handling editor for compliance with the journal’s aims, scope, and editorial policy. Manuscripts that do not comply with the journal’s scope, editorial policy, or editorial standards are rejected before peer review. The editor’s foreword and the section containing correction notices are not subject to peer review.

Manuscripts that do not meet the journal’s requirements for structure and formatting are returned to the authors for revision and resubmission. If the author does not respond to the editor’s request within 30 calendar days, the manuscript is considered no longer under consideration by the journal.

Manuscripts in which the StrikePlagiarism system identifies a significant percentage of textual borrowings after plagiarism screening are returned to the authors for revision. If signs of plagiarism are detected, the article is returned to the author without the right to resubmit that same article.

After all internal checks have been completed, the original manuscript is sent for external peer review (expert evaluation).

External review (evaluation by independent experts)

All articles submitted for publication are subject to double-blind peer review by at least two reviewers who are experts in the scholarly field of the particular article.

Members of the editorial board recommend as reviewers persons who are experts in the relevant scholarly field of the article and have publications on the article’s topic. Members of the editorial board may also serve as reviewers.

Reviewers are required to inform the editor and/or the editorial office as soon as possible of any potential conflicts of interest. They must also observe the principle of confidentiality when working with the manuscript, including refraining from using and/or reproducing it in whole or in part anywhere, and from disclosing information about the editorial request to review it.

The editorial board gives preference to articles containing qualitative and/or quantitative data, although the journal also publishes substantial review articles.

When preparing a review, the reviewer must answer “yes,” “no, requires minor revision,” or “no, requires major revision” to the following questions (these questions are included in the reviewer template on the OJS platform):

• Does the title of the article correspond to its content and purpose?

• Does the abstract reflect the main content of the article and follow the IMRAD structure?

• Are the key ideas of the article original, scientifically significant, and of interest to the readership?

• Are the main results of the article scientifically substantiated and significant?

• Does the article and its key parts comply with the technical requirements of the journal?

• Are the tables and figures justified, appropriate, and compliant with the journal’s requirements?

• Is the research methodology appropriate and properly substantiated?

• Is the language of the article scholarly, grammatically correct, and understandable to the readership?

• Does the “Relevance” section demonstrate knowledge of the literature relevant to the article’s subject matter?

• Are the conclusions clear and well reasoned?

If reviewers select “no, requires minor revision” or “no, requires major revision” for any item, they must provide well-reasoned comments and explain to the authors how the article can be improved.

Editors have the right not to communicate to the author any comments that contain subjective judgments about the manuscript, insults, or remarks that do not comply with the established requirements and criteria set out above.

Editors act as intermediaries in all discussions between authors and reviewers during peer review prior to publication. If agreement cannot be reached, the editors may invite additional reviewers.

The handling editor has the right to return a review for revision if the reviewer has failed to comply with the requirements set out in the Reviewer Guidelines or if the review contains ambiguous comments. In the event of serious concerns regarding the reviewer, the editor has the right to remove the reviewer from the list of persons whom the journal engages and/or to report the reviewer’s actions to the reviewer’s affiliated institution.

Reviewers do not perform structural or stylistic language editing of the manuscript, but, where necessary, they report editorial problems to the authors and journal editors in the relevant section of the review.

Reviewers’ decisions may be as follows:

• accept;

• accept after minor revisions (the authors have 5 days to make minor changes in accordance with the reviewers’ comments);

• accept after major revisions (the authors have two weeks to substantially revise the manuscript);

• reject with invitation to resubmit (the manuscript will be rejected, and the authors will be invited to resubmit the article after substantial revision of the content if, in the reviewers’ opinion, the article requires additional experiments or other empirical studies to support the conclusions);

• reject (the article is rejected without the right to resubmit the same article if it has serious deficiencies and/or does not contain original scientific results).

If an article may be accepted subject to revision, it is returned to the author(s) together with the reviewers’ comments and suggestions for improving the article, as well as any editorial recommendations, if applicable.

The author resubmits the revised version of the article together with clear responses to the reviewers’ comments. All changes must be highlighted in the text of the article.

The handling editor directly assesses the quality of the revisions or sends the article back to the reviewers for re-evaluation. In the event of a second round of peer review, the reviewer may be asked to assess the revised manuscript in light of the recommendations made during the first round.

Reviewers must express their views clearly and with justification, and they must be polite and constructive in their recommendations.

The author must respond to all reviewer comments point by point. The total duration of peer review may not exceed 2 months from the date the article is sent to the reviewer.

The journal permits a maximum of two rounds of peer review for a manuscript.

The editorial board takes the reviewers’ comments into account, but the final decision on publication of the article is made by the Editor-in-Chief.

Authors’ appeals

Authors may appeal a rejection decision. The procedure for such an appeal is described in the section “Complaints and Appeals” of the journal’s Editorial Policy.