REVIEWERS’ RESPONSIBILITIES

Reviewers are required to provide written, competent and unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the manuscript.

The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus.

Reviewers should alert the Editor to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors and alert the Editor to substantial similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event they are aware of such. Reviewers should also alert the Editor to a parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal, in the event they are aware of such.

Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay.

Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

PEER REVIEW

The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assist the Editor-in-Chief in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communication with the author it may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.

All papers undergo a double-blind peer review conducted by at least two experts in the field.

Reviewers are required to complete the peer review process within no more than two weeks from the date on which the review request was sent. If you are unable to comply with deadlines, please inform without delay notify the Editor in Chief. Upon request, or prior agreement with Editor in Chief, additional time can be granted for the review, but no more than two weeks (four weeks in total).

The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with authors.

The peer review process in Strani pravni život is conducted through the online journal management platform (OJS). Reviewers receive an email invitation from the Editorial Office requesting them to review the manuscript.

All submitted manuscripts are subject to double-blind peer review (the reviewer does not know the identity of the author, nor does the author know the identity of the reviewer). The purpose of the review is to assist the Editor-in-Chief in deciding whether the manuscript should be published, and - through communication with the authors - to help them improve the quality of their work.

To complete the review, reviewers must fill out an electronic form containing ten questions. Evaluation is performed by choosing a score from a drop-down menu (on a scale from 5 (the highest) to 1 (the lowest)).

Evaluation Scale

5= very good; 4= good; 3= minor issues (easily corrigible); 2= fundamental issues that require thorough revision of the manuscript; 1= manuscript doesn't comply with the standards of publication

Additional comments, suggestions, or observations can be entered below each question. These remarks are particularly important when the reviewer recommends changes to the manuscript or identifies deficiencies that prevent the work from meeting publication standards.

Reviewers may also provide suggestions directly within the manuscript text by using the Track Changes and comment section, provided that they do so in a way that ensures their identity remains concealed from the author(s). If this option is chosen, the reviewer attaches the annotated document when submitting the review (via the “Reviewer Files” option). 

The identity of reviewers remains unknown to authors before, during, and after the peer review process. Authors are advised to avoid formulations in their manuscripts that could reveal their identity. The Editor guarantees that, prior to sending a manuscript for review, all personal data of the authors (primarily name and affiliation) will be removed, and that all reasonable measures will be taken to ensure that the authors’ identity remains unknown to reviewers until the completion of the peer review procedure.

All of the reviewers of a manuscript act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor-in-Chief may assign additional reviewers.

During the review process, the Editor-in-Chief may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

The editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

Members of the editorial team/board/guest editors are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review.

REVIEW USING OJS

Review process in the journal Strani pravni život  is conducted using online platform for online editing of journals (OJS). The reviewers will receive an e-mail from the Editor inquiring them to conduct the review. If the reviewer accepts to conduct the review, he/she is asked to fill out an electronic form containing ten questions. Reviewer is required to grade each segment of the paper set in the review form. If the grade is 3 or lower, the reviewer is requested to write additional comments under each question in free form. Also, the reviewer can make suggestions to the author in the paper using Track Changes and Comments section but using the adequate blinding system so that his/her identity stays secret to the author(s). If so, the reviewer should attach annotated document(s) when completing his/her review (via the “Reviewer Files” option).

Signing Up as a Reviewer

When you register as a user with the website, you are asked whether you wish to sign up for the reviewer role. You can also add the reviewer role at any time, even if you’ve already registered, by going to the User Profile page in the editorial backend.

You'll also be asked to specify your reviewer interests, so that Editorial team can make better choices when selecting reviewers for a submission.

In many cases, you may have already been added into the system as a reviewer. This happens when an Editor wants to invite you to review a submission, but you’re not yet registered in the system. In that case, the Editorial Team will set up your account and send you review invitation and access parameters.

Completing a Review

You can see if you’ve been assigned any reviews by going to the Submissions page in the editorial backend. If you see any submissions in the My Assigned area, you can click on the link indicating its current stage to access the reviewer walk-through.

Request

The first step requests that you accept or decline the request to perform a review. You’ll find the relevant submission details as well as due dates for responding to the request and submitting your review. All reviewer receive review request by e-mail from the Editor. Strani pravni život uses one-click review access, i.e. by clicking on the link the reviewer can access the manuscript and review form. Reviewer cannot see the manuscript before he/she has accepted to review it.

Guidelines

Second tab of the review form contains reviewer guidelines to ensure that you’re able to provide a review in the format and according to the standards desired.

Download & Review

You’ll find the Review Files for you to download and review. Once you’ve evaluated the files, you'll be asked to enter your review in the review form. Review form contains several questions. Each question requires grading on scale 1 to 5 (1 being the lowest and 5 the highest score). Additional comments, suggestions, annotations can be made under each question in free form. We especially value the comments in case you have suggested to the author to modify some aspects of the manuscript, or you point to some deficiencies of the paper making it unsuitable to be published.

GRADING SYSTEM:

5= very good; 4= good; 3= minor issues (easily corrigible); 2= fundamental issues that require thorough revision of the manuscript; 1= manuscript doesn't comply with the standards of publication

If you prepared your review in a separate file, you can upload that file via Reviewers File section.

Completion

Editor will send an acknowledgment to the reviewer by email once he/she has read the review.

A record of your reviews is kept in the system, so editors can see - and appreciate - how many reviews you've done for the journal at all times.

How to write your report

Complete all review questions in the report form. If you think it is necessary, make suggestions as to how the author can improve clarity, succinctness, and the overall quality of presentation. In case that the reviewer suggest publication under certain conditions, it is expected from the reviewer to make suggestions regarding the necessary changes (shortening of the manuscript, revision or omission of certain parts) that can be given through the evaluation report or in the text of the paper (track changes). In case that the reviewer suggests the rejection of the paper (negative review) it is expected that the reviewer thoroughly elaborates why the paper is not suitable for publication.

Try to see if the article fits the scope of the journal, whether the article is original, if the research helps to expand of further research in this subject area, would the paper be of interest to the readership of the journal. If on some of these question you find answer No, consider recommending that the author submits the paper in some related journal. Also, look if the article is written in Standard English language, is there an abstract, as well as a concluding section.

Make a recommendation

After you finished reading the paper and have assessed its quality, you need to make a recommendation to the editor regarding publication. You can make following decisions:

• Accept the paper for publication.
• Conditionally accept the paper for publication – the acceptance is under the condition that the author modifies the paper in accordance with suggestions of the reviewer.
• Return the paper to the author for a thorough revision and ask the author to resubmit the paper for a new review.
• Reject the paper.

Revised papers

When authors revise their article in response to reviewer comments, they are asked to submit a list of changes and any comments for transmission to the reviewers.

If possible, the revised version is usually returned to the original reviewer who is then asked to affirm whether the revisions have been carried out satisfactorily.