Rules of considering and reviewing papers

Rules of considering and reviewing papers

All the papers of the “Applied Photonics” journal are to be peer reviewed by the members of the Editorial Board.

First, the materials submitted to the Editorial Board are checked on their compliance with the formatting requirements and then they are sent for per-reviews.

When the materials are approved (and all the issues are settled with authors) the Editorial Board informs the author that his/her paper will be published or sends a reasonable refusal.

When a journal issue is published, the Editorial Board shall send one copy of the issue to authors to the addresses specified in the “About the authors” part.

3.1. A reviewer of the Journal is a prominent scientist working in the area of the manuscript contents.

3.2. An author or co-author of a reviewed paper cannot be a reviewer, as well as academic supervisors of external doctoral candidates and division staff where an author works.

3.3. Authors may submitt an external review tother with the manuscript; however, it doesn’t change the regular terms of reviewing.

3.4. Reviewers are not entitled to use the information of paper contents in their own interests before it is published.

3.5. Reviewers must follow the approved Policy of Journal “Applied Photonics” with regard to ethical practices for publication of papers, which can be found at the Journal website: http://applied.photonics.pstu.ru/polit/#p2

3.6. A review is to be made according to the standard form of the Editorial Board or in any other form including such obligatory issues:

- relevance of the submitted paper;

- scientific novelty of research considered in the paper;

- significance of problem (task) setting or obtained results for further development of theorical and practical knowledge in the studied area;

- sufficiency and relevance of research methods;

- completeness of the material of research;

- correctness of discussing the obtained results;

- compliance of conclusions with the aim and targets of research;

- proper length of a manuscript in general and its elements (text, tables, illustrations, references);

 - appropriateness of tables, illustrations and its compliance with the discussed problem;

- high quality of papers;

- proper style, terminology, language.

The final part of a review is to contain valid conclusions related to the paper in general and a clear recommendation if the paper can be published in the Journal or it should be improved.

In case of a negative review of a manuscript in general (recommendation not to publish the manuscript) a reviewer is to justify his conclusions.

In case a manuscript does not comply with one or some criteria, a reviewer is to indicate the need in paper improval including reviewer recommendations for improvement (specifying author’s discrepancies and mistakes).

3.7. The Editorial Board informs an author of the review result.  Papers improved by an author are sent to the same reviewer for the second time or to another reviewer at the discretion of the Editorial Board.

3.8. If an author disagrees with the reviewer remarks, he should request for the second review or withdraw the paper and inform the Journal Editorial Board about it.

3.9. In case of a negative review, the paper will be given to another reviewer that will not be informed of the previous review results. In case of the second negative review, the copies of them will be sent to the author(s).

3.10. The final decision that a paper should be published after reviewing will be taken by the Editorial Board.

3.11. The following manuscripts will not be published in the Journal:

- papers which topics are not related to the Journal; 

- papers which do not meet the submission guidelines, if authors refuse to technically improve their papers;

 - papers that are not improved by their authors according to a reviewer’s comments.

3.12. The period of time accepted for studying and reviewing manuscripts is less than 3 months.

3.13. The Journal Editorial Board stores reviews for 5 years. 

3.14. The Editorial Board does not store rejected manuscripts. Manuscripts accepted for publication will not be returned.

3.15. The Journal Editorial Board sends copies of reviews or reasoned refusal to the authors of submissions.

3.16. The Journal Editorial Board sends copies of reviews to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in case of receiving relevant request.