Peer Review Policy

Model of Peer Review

All AQIE Publications journals operate a single anonymized review process. The editors and reviewers have access to the identities of the authors, but the identities of the editors and reviewers are not revealed to the authors.

Peer Review Process

The whole processing of the manuscript can be referred as below:

Initial Check

After the submission steps are completed, the submission will go through similarity check by Editorial Office. Then the Academic Editor, such as Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor, Editorial Board member or Guest Editor, will assess the overall suitability of the manuscript to the scope of the journal and the scientific merit of the manuscript. If it passed the evaluation, the manuscript will be sent for peer review. Otherwise, it may be rejected due to poor quality/being out of scope or sent back for author revision before peer review.

First Round of Peer Review

The initial check-passed manuscript and supplementary material will be sent to at least two independent reviewers, who are requested to assess the scientific quality of the paper. Typically, two or three available review reports are required for each manuscript in peer review. In these review reports, reviewers are expected to provide a recommended decision together with specific suggestions and comments.

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First Round of Academic Editor Decision

The Academic Editor will make an overall editorial decision after carefully evaluating the recommendations of all the reviewers.

Author Major/Minor Revision:

The manuscript is sent to authors for Minor/ Major Revision based on reviewers' comments;

Accept: The manuscript can be accepted in its current form;

Reject: The manuscript has serious flaws, and/or is lack of novelty or significant contribution;

Reject and Encourage Resubmission: The authors are encouraged to resubmit after conducting additional experiments and modifications.

Author Revision

Based on the review reports and the decision by Academic Editor, the decision (Minor Revision/Major Revision) will be provided to the authors.

Minor Revision: The paper can be accepted after addressing all the revisions provided by the reviewers.

Major Revision: It depends on the revised version whether the manuscript could be accepted or not.

Usually, the revised version will be re-evaluated by the previous reviewer(s).

The authors are requested to response all review comments point by point. If the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response.

Second Round of Peer Review

A manuscript with major revision will be sent to those original reviewers for a second round of peer review, along with point-by-point responses. The reviewers will evaluate if the manuscript has improved enough based on the first round of review comments.

Final Decision

The Academic Editor will make a final decision based on the authors' minor revision or further comments from the second round of peer review.

The Academic Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of articles.

Academic Editors are not involved in decisions about papers that they have written themselves or have been written by family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in which the academic editor has an interest.

 

Any such submission is subject to all of the journal's usual procedures, with peer review handled independently of the relevant editor and their research groups.

Production and Publication

Once accepted, the manuscript will go through the production procedure including copy editing, English editing, proofreading, final corrections, conversion, and finally publishing on the website.

Guidelines for Reviewers

More guidelines for reviewers are available at For Reviewers.

Appeal Process

Authors may appeal decisions if they strongly believe there have been errors or misunderstandings on the part of the editor or reviewers.

All appeals will be carefully considered by the editors.