Procedure for reviewing papers
Reviewing procedure for manuscripts
Reviewing of paper manuscripts (papers), sent by authors for publication in the journal "Bulletin of the South Ural State University. Chemistry series" is carried out in accordance with the following rules.
The publication referees all materials sent to the editorial board and matching the topic in order to give expert opinion on them. All readers are acknowledged experts in the topic of the reviewed materials and have a number of works on this topic published for the last three years. Reviews are kept in the publishing house and in the editorial office for 5 years.
The editorial board sends copies of reviews or reasonable refusal to the authors of submitted materials, and undertakes to send copies of reviews to Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation upon the request.
A. Circulation of documents
1. Only the papers drawn according to the instruction for the authors intending publication in the "Bulletin of the South Ural State University. Chemistry series" are submitted to peer review. Departures from the general rules are permitted in the cases of the papers prepared at the request of the editorial board.
2. The paper is sent by post for peer review to a specialist in a relevant branch of science (the reviewer), with the Doctor of Science degree. Neither a member of the editorial board nor an author may be a reviewer. The reviewer is notified of the paper sent for review by phone or e-mail.
3. The reviewer should finish the review within 1 month from the date of receiving the paper. Then the review is sent to the editorial board by post. As a rule, the circulation of documents between the editorial board and the reviewer takes not longer than 2 months from the date of sending the paper to the reviewer.
4. The contact author gets the copy of the review, the reviewer's signature is cut out (the reviewer's identity is concealed from the authors). The copy of the review is sent to the contact author either by post or by e-mail.
5. If the peer review is positive as to publishability of the paper but contains remarks or suggestions, the paper is returned to the authors for revision. After being returned to the editors, it is again sent to the reviewer who notifies the editorial board about publishability. If the authors ignore the reviewer's suggestions of changes in the manuscript, the paper is not published. The authors may give reasons for their refusal to follow the reviewer's recommendations, in writing. In this case the explanatory letter of the authors is sent to the reviewer, who either agrees or disagrees with the authors. In the case of the reviewer's disagreement the paper is not published, the authors are notified by an official letter formulating the impossibility (inadvisability) of the paper being published in its present form.
B. The form and content of the review
1. The review is titled: "Review of the paper… the authors… "the paper title".
2. In the text the reviewer outlines:
- what the paper is about;
- importance of the problems solved and the aims in hand;
- disclosure of the methods for solution of problems described in the paper;
- principal merits and demerits of the paper;
- scientific novelty and practical significance;
- style and correctness of writing;
- structuring of the paper;
- orthographic and syntactic mistakes.
3. The reviewer draws a conclusion
- about possibility (advisability) of the paper being published in the journal;
- about possibility of publication after revision of the paper and correction of mistakes;
- about impossibility (inadvisability) of the paper being published.
4. The review is signed by the name of the reviewer whose academic degree should be stated (the academic rank and position are optional).
C. Reviewer Requirements
Reviewers should have a doctor's degree in chemistry; they can be professors of leading institutes of higher education inRussiaor foreign countries, or of research institutes belonging to theRussianAcademyof Science; they should be experts in the subject matter of a publication, with published works in the research area of the reviewed paper. Foreign reviewers can have PhD degree in chemistry.
