Reviewers’ mission

Reviewers are selected based on their scientific and intellectual expertise. They are tasked with the evaluation of the manuscripts solely on their contents, without consideration for the ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, university affiliation or political opinion of the author. Judgments should be objective. Reviewers are required to flag all articles that are similar, to some degree, to the article submitted to the journal. Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.

Conflict of Interest

Editorial board members and reviewers must recuse themselves if there is a conflict of interest with an author or with the content of the manuscript to be reviewed. Furthermore, reviewers who know that they are not qualified to review a manuscript or that they will be unable to do so within a reasonable period of time are required to inform the editorial board of this fact and to recuse themselves.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts received for review are treated confidentially. No information about a manuscript submitted to a journal may be disclosed to anyone other than the author, potential reviewers, and in some cases the publisher. Reviewers will not keep or copy the manuscripts they receive for evaluation.

Data Use

The data presented in the submitted articles may not be used prior to publication in the research of an editorial board member or reviewer without the author’s express written consent.

Review Process

With the exception of potential book reviews, which are evaluated by the review editor (and discussed with members of the editorial board), articles submitted to the journal are reviewed according to the following method:

• Double-blind review: the author does not know the identity of the reviewers, and the reviewers do not know the identity of the author. There are at least two (or three) reviewers for each article outside the author's institution.

In the event of doubts or diverging evaluations among the reviewers, additional opinions may be sought by the editorial board. Articles that would be contrary to the journal’s editorial policy may be rejected by the editorial board without an evaluation report being supplied. Based on the reviewers’ reports, the editorial board takes one of the following three decisions within a reasonable period of time following receipt of the manuscript :

• Acceptance of the manuscript as submitted to the journal;
• Rejection;
• Acceptance subject to modifications.

In the latter case, the editorial board will make a final decision based on whether or not the author adopted the suggestions and comments provided by the reviewers. Any manuscript that is accepted either when first submitted or following modifications by the author is subject to editing conducted in collaboration with the author. When reaching a decision, the editorial board considers legal requirements in terms of defamation, copyright violation, and plagiarism.