Review process

The peer review procedures used by Academicon Publishing House comply with the Regulation of the Minister of Science and Higher Education of 2 December 2015 (Journal of Laws 2015, item 2015) and the guidelines on peer review prepared by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in the booklet Good Practices in Peer Review Procedures in Science.

  1. Manuscripts submitted for publication undergo a preliminary assessment by the Publishing House’s editorial teams.

  2. The Publishing House follows the principle of double-blind peer review, whereby the identities of the reviewer and the author are concealed from each other.

  3. Manuscripts that pass the preliminary assessment are sent to two independent reviewers who:

    a. are not affiliated with the same institution as the authors;

    b. have no conflict of interest involving the author;

    c. have no relationship of professional subordination or supervision with the authors;

    d. have not collaborated directly with the authors on scholarly work during the two years preceding the review;

    e. have no close personal relationships with the authors (where the pool of specialists in a given field is very limited, exceptions may be made to the principles set out in points c–e);

    f. have expertise in the relevant field, hold a habilitation degree (doktor habilitowany) and have an appropriate record of scholarly achievement;

    g. have an impeccable reputation as reviewers.

  4. The Publishing House provides prospective reviewers with a description of the publication, including its title and length in publishing sheets, together with an abstract. Reviewers are entirely free to accept or decline the invitation to review, but are given a proposed deadline for their decision.

  5. Throughout the review process, reviewers must keep their assessments of the manuscript confidential and must not make use of knowledge gained from it before its publication.

  6. Reviewers submit their reviews electronically, using the review form, to the Publishing House’s email address: wydawnictwo@academicon.pl. Reviews are retained by the Publishing House for five years.

  7. Reviews should be fair, objective, thorough, rigorous, constructive and grounded in the reviewer’s expertise. The Publishing House does not accept reviews that clearly fail to meet the substantive and formal requirements of scholarly peer review. These include perfunctory reviews, reviews dominated by unsupported criticism or praise, and reviews whose conclusions do not follow logically from their content—for example, strongly critical reviews with a positive recommendation, or the reverse.

  8. Reviewers must report any instances or suspicions of plagiarism or redundant (duplicate) publication, as well as irregularities in the reporting of data, including data manipulation.

  9. Reviewers’ comments are forwarded to the author of the manuscript. Reasoned and substantiated conclusions presented in the reviews are binding on the author, who must address the reviewers’ recommendations and revise the manuscript accordingly. Reviewers have the right to reassess the revised manuscript.

  10. If the author disagrees with a reviewer’s conclusions, the author has the right to submit a response to the Publishing House.

  11. The decision to include a work in the publishing programme is made by the Head of the Publishing House’s Editorial Office, with the support of members of its Academic Advisory Board, on the basis of the recommendations contained in two peer reviews.