The AUOC-SP peer review process comprises of three stages.
During the first stage, articles received undergo a preliminary screening during which the members of the editorial board review whether the submission is compatible with the scope and aims of the journal and whether it meets the editing requirements mentioned in the Author’s Guidelines (style of citation, word count, language proficiency). At this stage, submissions can be desk-rejected or sent back to the author in order to fix the technical issues.
Articles that advance to the second stage are submitted for the double blind peer review. The article is anonymized and personal details like names and other identifiable data are removed. The reviewers are carefully selected, in order to ensure an independent evaluation, that they are not affiliated with the same institution(s) as the author(s) and that there are no conflicts of interest. They are asked to complete a review form, which contains no personal information about the authors. The form asks them to consider whether the title, abstract, keywords are adequate for the content of the article. They also have to address the quality and relevance of the introduction, methodology as well as the validity of the conclusions. At the end, they have to specify whether the article should be accepted pending major or minor revisions or whether it should be rejected.
Once this stage is completed, the article is sent back to the authors, who are asked to consult the feedback received in order to adequately revise their submission. When submitting the revised proposal, the authors are asked to justify how the changes made relate to the reviewers’ recommendations.
In the third stage, the revised proposal is sent back to the reviewers who, if necessary, provide final recommendations.
In the event of a tie (one review is positive while the other recommends that the article should be rejected), the editor assigned to the manuscript will decide whether the manuscript will be sent to the author for major revision or whether it will be rejected.
After the author has made all the required revisions and the submission is accepted for publication, the article moves to the pre-press stage where it is edited and proofread by the editorial board. The proofs are then sent to the authors in order to give their final approval. At this point, while the authors are allowed to make small editing changes, they are not allowed to add additional information.