Peer Review
Reviewing of the Papers, Submitted to the Oriental Courier / Vostochnyi Kurier Journal
The Oriental Courier / Vostochnyi Kurier is a peer-reviewed academic publication that meets the criteria of RSCI and Scopus. Articles undergo double-blind peer reviewing and may be rejected by the editorial board of the journal or returned to the author for revision. Reviewing in the journal is anonymous.
Reviewing is done in ten steps:
1. Submission of Paper
The corresponding or submitting author submits the paper to the journal via an online system or directly by email to the editorial electronic address.
2. Editorial Office Assessment
The journal checks the paper’s composition and arrangement against the journal’s Author Guidelines to make sure it includes the required sections and stylizations. The quality of the paper is not assessed at this point.
3. Appraisal by the Editor-in-Chief (EIC)
The EIC checks that the paper is appropriate for the journal and is sufficiently original and interesting. If not, the paper may be rejected without being reviewed any further.
4. EIC Assigns an Associate Editor (AE)
One of the AEs (Academic Editors) handles the preliminary peer review.
5. Invitation to Reviewers
The handling editor sends invitations to individuals (s)he believes would be appropriate reviewers. Invitations are issued until the required number of acceptances is obtained – usually two is sufficient.
6. Response to Invitations
Potential reviewers consider the invitation against their own expertise, conflicts of interest and availability. They then accept or decline. If possible, when declining, they might also suggest alternative reviewers.
7. Review is Conducted
The reviewer sets time aside to read the paper several times. The first read is used to form an initial impression of the work. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further work. Otherwise, they will read the paper several more times, taking notes to build a detailed point-by-point review. The review is then submitted to the journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject it – or else with a request for revision (usually flagged as either major or minor) before it is reconsidered.
8. Journal Evaluates the Reviews
The handling editor considers all the returned reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer to get an extra opinion before making a decision.
9. The Decision is Communicated
The editor sends a decision email to the author including any relevant reviewer comments. Whether the comments are anonymous or not will depend on the type of peer review that the journal operates.
10. Further Steps
If accepted, the paper is sent to production. If the article is rejected or sent back for either major or minor revision, the handling editor should include constructive comments from the reviewers to help the author improve the article. At this point, reviewers should also be sent an email or letter letting them know the outcome of their review. If the paper was sent back for revision, the reviewers should expect to receive a new version, unless they have opted out of further participation. However, where only minor changes were requested this follow-up review might be done by the handling editor.