Peer-Review Policy
AlterEconomics reviews all submitted materials that correspond to its scope for the purpose of expert evaluation. All reviewers are experts recognized in the subject field of the article under review and having published on the topic of the article within the last three years. The reviews are kept in the in the editorial office for 5 years.
Manuscripts are accepted for consideration only if they meet the layout requirements posted on the website of the journal AlterEconomics. Manuscripts failing to meet these requirements will not be accepted for review, and the editors will notify the author accordingly.
All received and registered manuscripts are subject to double-blind peer-review. This means that the identity of the reviewer is unknown to the author and vice versa. The name and contacts of the authors and reviewers are known only to the Associate Editor (or the Editor-in-Chief).
Associate editor sends received manuscripts for consideration according to the research profile to Subject Editors. Subject Editors look for reviewers, and can also act as one of them.
The Editor-in-Chief takes a preliminary decision on the manuscript’s acceptance or rejection based on the reviewers’ reports. The Editorial Team sends a reasoned response to the authors, which includes the comments of all reviewers and the editorial decision:
- Accepted
- Accepted with minor revision
- Accepted with major revision
- Rejected
This decision is made within 30 days.
In some cases, the Editor-in-Chief at a meeting of the Editorial Board decides the issue of choosing reviewers.
To avoid conflicts of interest, the Associate editor controls that reviewers and authors do not work in the same scientific organization.
The reviewer cannot be the author or co-author of the reviewed work.
If the reviewers are not sure that their qualifications correspond to the level and direction of the research presented in the manuscript of the article, they should immediately refuse to review.
Reviewers are required to declare any potential conflict of interest prior to the review. The conflict of interest may be personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious, and may also include any relationship with the authors that affects the result of the review.
Subject editors, as well as reviewers, should not invite authors to include references to their works in order to increase the number of personal citations. Possible proposals should be based on valid academic or technological considerations.
Reviewers are not allowed to make copies of manuscripts for their own needs and are prohibited from giving part of the manuscript to another person for review without the permission of the Editorial Board. Reviewers, as well as editorial staff, have no right to use information about the content of the work before its publication in their own interests. The manuscripts are the intellectual property of the authors and belong to the information not subject to disclosure.
The editorial board of the publication sends copies of reviews or a reasoned refusal to the authors of the submitted materials, and also undertakes to send copies of reviews to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation when the corresponding request is received.
Requirements for the review’s content
The main purpose of the review is a meaningful expert assessment of the quality of a scientific article.
The reviewers act on the basis of Publication Ethics of the journal AlterEconomics, objectively and impartially consider the submitted manuscript. Personal criticism of authors, hostility, and insulting tone are unacceptable. Reviewers should avoid statements that cast doubt on the reputation of the authors and formulate their conclusions about the reviewed manuscript with due respect.
The review should be prepared by the reviewer in the form of an expert questionnaire approved by the editorial board.
The form of the expert questionnaire is based on a point system for evaluating the article according to each criterion, supplemented by objective argumentation and reasonable conclusions about the possibility of publishing the material in the journal AlterEconomics. The presence of the approved review form ensures comparability of the review results when selecting articles for the next issue of the journal.
The review assumes the evaluation of the article according to the following criteria:
- compliance of the article with the profile of the journal;
- relevance of the completed research;
- completeness of criticism of previous studies sufficient to formulate a theoretical problem;
- scientific novelty of the materials offered in the article;
- reasonableness of presentation and validity of conclusions;
- quality of the list of references;
- annotation quality;
- correspondence of the title of the article to its content.
Based on the above analysis, the reviewers draw conclusions about the possibility of publishing the manuscript, and issue (if necessary) recommendations, including clarifications of the presented research results, additions to the material proposed for publication, etc. In case of a negative assessment of the article as a whole, reviewers should justify their conclusions convincingly.
Reviewers should inform the editorial board about cases of plagiarism and coincidences of the submitted manuscript with other published works or submitted manuscripts that they are aware of or that are in the sphere of scientific interests of the reviewers.
Decision making on the publication
The final decision on the acceptance of the article is made at a meeting of the editorial board of the journal.
In case of a positive decision to publish an article in the journal AlterEconomics, the Associate editor informs the authors about the acceptance of the article for publication with an indication of the publication dates.
The manuscripts approved for publication are submitted to the technical editor. The technical editor without the consent of the author makes minor stylistic or formal corrections that do not affect the content of the article. After that, the manuscripts in the form of article layout are returned to the authors for approval of their publication.
In case of a negative decision to publish an article, the Associate editor informs the authors about the decision and sends a reasoned refusal.
If the scientific editor and/or reviewers indicate the need to make certain adjustments to the article, the article is sent to the authors with a proposal to take into account comments when preparing an updated version of the manuscript. After revision, the manuscript is reviewed again.
In case of disagreement with the opinion of the reviewers, the authors of the article have the right to provide a reasoned response to the editorial board of the journal. In this case, the article is considered at a meeting of the editorial board. The Editorial Board may send the article for additional or new review to another specialist. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject manuscripts in case of insolvency or unwillingness of the authors to take into account the wishes and comments of reviewers.
The original articles accepted for publication are not returned to the authors. The editorial board does not store materials that are not accepted for publication and does not return them to the authors.
The editorial board provides storage and access to articles published in the journal AlterEconomics.