Peer Review Guidelines

1. General provisions

1.1.  Authors submit manuscripts only via personal account on the web-site of the Journal.

1.2. All submissions are subject to mandatory initial screening and double blind peer review.

1.3. The decision about acceptance or rejection of manuscript is made, as usual, not earlier than in two months from the date of its submission.

1.4. The Journal’s Chief Editor might reject the manuscript :
— if the author is unavailable for more than thirty days;
— upon consideration of peer review and the author’s response to the referees.

1.5. Positive peer-review’ reports do not guarantee acceptance of the manuscript.

2. Initial screening

2.1. Initial screening of manuscript is carried out within up to seven days from the date of submission.

2.2. The Board Secretary screens submitted manuscript for its compliance with the Pravovedenie Manuscript Submission Guidelines and Pravovedenie Style Guidelines, making sure that length and structure of the manuscript is appropriate; the list of references, keywords and abstracts in English and Russian are provided; the formatting of the manuscript fits the requirements; the author’s details and contact information are included, etc.

2.3. If a manuscript fails to comply with the Pravovedenie Manuscript Submission Guidelines and Pravovedenie Style Guidelines, it is returned to the author for revision.

2.4. Once the manuscript has been screened, the Board Secretary forwards it for peer review.

3. Peer review

3.1. All manuscripts cleared by the initial screening are subject to impartial external double blind peer review by no less than two referees with area of expertise in the subject of the submitted manuscript.

3.2. The external peer reviewers are selected among acknowledged experts with area of expertise in the subject of the submitted manuscript, who have publications issued over the last three years on the subject field relevant to the manuscript’s topic.

3.3. The peer reviewer is expected to accept/reject the invitation to review the manuscript within 1 week from the receipt of the invitation and to review the manuscript within 2 weeks from the date of acceptance of the invitation.

3.4. The peer reviewer is obliged to follow publication ethics of the Journal.

3.5. Peer reviewing is double blind, which means that the author’s identity is not revealed to the reviewer and vice versa.

3.6. The peer reviewer provides his/her feedback via personal account on the web-site of the Journal.

3.7. Upon reviewing manuscript, the peer reviewer provides detailed and substantiated responses to the following questions:
— Are main conclusions of the manuscript novel (original) in their content and/or interpretation? If yes, what is new and/or original about them?
— How does the manuscript correlate with the existent scholarship and current research in the relevant subject field?
— Is there any evidence of plagiarism or other forms of academic misconduct in the manuscript?
— Is the text of the manuscript coherent and clear?
— Does the structure of the manuscript fit the Journal’s guidelines? Is the language and style appropriate, is the terminology used correctly? Are the tables, charts, figures, etc. illustrative? Do the footnotes, references, and citations of the published and unpublished primary sources conform to the Journal’s guidelines?
— Would the reviewed manuscript be of interest to the readers of the Journal? If yes, what would make the readers interested?

3.8. Based on the results of the manuscript evaluation, the peer reviewer recommends one of the following options:
— to accept the manuscript for publication in its original form (without any revisions);
— to accept the manuscript for publication once the author has checked the revisions suggested by the referee (the author decides if to apply the revisions or not);
— to accept the manuscript for publication once the reviewers’ revisions are implemented;
— to reject the manuscript with the option of resubmission;
— to reject the manuscript without the option of resubmission.

3.9. By decision of the Chief Editor, the manuscript may be sent for additional revision, including the cases of resubmission of the revised manuscript.

3.10. The author may find the results of the peer-review in the personal account on the web-site of the Journal.

3.11. The author revises the manuscript according to the referees’ comments and/or provides a detailed response to the referees.

3.13. If the author forwards the revised manuscript more one month from the date of submission of referees’ reports, the manuscript is regarded as submitted anew.

4. Decision for accept for publication or reject

4.1. In deciding whether to accept or reject a manuscript, the Chief Editor considers the revised text of the manuscript, peer reviewers’ reports, and the author’s responses.

4.2. The author can find information about the Chief Editor’s decision on the manuscript in the personal account on the web-site of the Journal. The author recieves the copies of peer reviews or the motivated answer.