Peer Review Process

Pre-desk review

All manuscripts received by the editorial office are checked by the executive editor regarding the purpose, subject, and policy of the journal. Manuscripts that do not meet the journal's subject matter and editorial policy or journal editorial standards are rejected for review. The editor's introduction and the block with information about corrections are not subject to review.

Manuscripts of articles that do not meet the journal's requirements for structure and design are returned to the authors for revision and resubmission. If the author has not sent a response to the editor's request within 30 calendar days, it is considered that the manuscript is not under review by the journal editorial office.

Manuscripts of articles in which, after checking for plagiarism in the Unicheck and/or iThenticate system, a significant percentage of textual borrowings were found, should be returned to the authors for revision. If plagiarism is detected, the article will be returned to the author without the right to resubmit this article.

Do not submit manuscripts whose content overlaps substantially with any already published items or other manuscripts submitted for publication elsewhere.

The editors prefer articles with qualitative and/or quantitative data, although the journal publishes in-depth review articles.

After desk review, the author's manuscript is submitted for peer review (expert evaluation, external).

 

Peer-review (external reviewers)

All articles submitted for publication are subject to a double-blind review on the Open Journal System (OJS) platform by at least two external reviewers who are experts in the scientific field.

Members of the editorial board recommend as reviewers those persons who are experts in the scientific field of an article and have publications on the topic of the article. Members of the editorial board can also act as reviewers.

Reviewers must adhere to international best peer review practices, including the Guidelines for Reviewers from the European Association of Science Editors, the Web of Science Academy, and the requirements of Bulletin.

Reviewers should alert the editor and/or editors to any potential personal or financial conflict of interest he/she may have and decline to review when a possibility of a conflict exists. They must also adhere to the principle of confidentiality when working with the manuscript of the article, in particular not to use and/or reproduce it in whole or in part anywhere, and not to disclose information about the editorial request to review.

Under the review process, the reviewer provides answers "yes", or "no, requires minor revision" or "no, requires considerable revision" to the following questions (the question is specified in the reviewer’s form on the OJS platform):

  1. Does the title of the article correspond to its content and purpose?
  2. Does the abstract reflect the main content of the article and correspond to the IMRAD structure?
  3. Are the key ideas of the article original, scientifically significant, and interesting to the readers?
  4. Are the main results of the article scientifically grounded and valid?
  5. Do the article and its key parts comply with the IMRAD structure and the technical requirements of the journal?
  6. Are the tables and figures justified, appropriate and meet the requirements of the Bulletin?
  7. Is the research methodology appropriate and properly substantiated?
  8. Is the language of the article scientific, grammatically correct, and understandable to the readers?
  9. In the "Discussion" section, is the knowledge of the relevant issues of the literature demonstrated?
  10. Are the conclusions clear and reasoned?

If the reviewers chose the answers “no, requires minor revision” or “no, requires considerable revision” for any point, they should write reasons and explain to the authors how to improve the article.

The editors have the right not to notify the author of those comments that contain a subjective assessment of the manuscript, insults, or do not meet the established requirements and criteria specified above.

Editors mediate all discussions between authors and reviewers during the review of an article prior to publication. If an agreement cannot be reached, the editors may invite additional reviewers.

The executive editor has the right to return the review for revision if the reviewer did not comply with the requirements established by the Recommendations for reviewers, and the review contains ambiguous remarks. In case of significant remarks to the reviewer, the editor has the right to exclude the reviewer from the list of persons to whom the publication addresses, and/or to inform his/her affiliation about his/her actions.

Reviewers are not supposed to provide structural or stylistic editing of the manuscript. If necessary, they should report the editors about it in the appropriate block of the review form.

Reviewer's decisions may be as follows:

  • to accept submission;
  • accept after minor revisions (author(s) has(ve) 5 days to make minor changes in accordance with reviewers' comments);
  • accept after considerable revisions (author(s) has(ve) two weeks to substantially revise the manuscript);
  • reject, but the author(s) may resubmit after review (the manuscript will be rejected, and the author(s) will be asked to resubmit the article after substantial revision of the content, if, according to the reviewers, the article requires additional experiments, other empirical studies to confirm the conclusions);
  • reject (the article is rejected without the right to resubmit the same article if it has serious flaws and/or does not contain original scientific results).

If the article can be accepted but requires revision, it is returned to the author(s) along with the reviewers' comments and suggestions for improving the article and the editors' recommendations, if any.

The author(s) resubmits a revised version of the article along with clear responses to the reviewers' comments. The author(s) must highlight all changes in the text of the article.

The executive editor directly evaluates the quality of changes or submits the article to the reviewer(s) for re-evaluation. In the case of a second round of review, the reviewer may be asked to evaluate a revised version of the manuscript in light of the reviewer's recommendations made during the first round of review.

Reviewers should clearly and reasonedly express their point of view, and be polite and constructive in their recommendations.

The author must respond to all comments of the reviewer following the points of the review.

The total period of review cannot exceed 3 months from the date of receipt of the article by the reviewer.

The journal allows a maximum of two rounds of manuscript review.

The editors take into account the comments of the reviewers, but the final decision on the publication of the article is made by the editor-in-chief of the journal.

 

Authors appeal

Authors can appeal the rejection of publication. The procedure for such an appeal is described in the "Complaints and Appeals" section of the Editorial Policy.