Article review procedure
1. The peer-review process is a key element in ensuring the scientific quality of publications and involves a sequence of organizational, expert, and editorial actions aimed at assessing the scientific novelty, reliability, and academic integrity of a manuscript. The University’s scientific periodicals implement a double-blind anonymous peer-review model, in which neither the author nor the reviewer is aware of each other’s identity.
2. The article is subject to mandatory review by one of the members of the journal’s editorial board. Reviewers are appointed by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal or, upon their instruction, by the Deputy Editor-in-Chief. Internal review is carried out by members of the journal’s editorial board and, upon the instruction of the Editor-in-Chief, by University staff holding a Doctoral or Candidate of Sciences (PhD) degree who conduct research or teach in specialties of the relevant profile.
3. External reviewers are engaged by the Editor-in-Chief on a voluntary basis from among leading scholars of other higher education institutions, research institutes of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and sectoral academies of sciences.
4. Reviewers must meet the requirements of scientific competence, impartiality, and independence from the authors. Reviewers must confirm their consent to perform the review and strictly comply with the established rules.
5. In accordance with the COPE / WAME principles, a reviewer may decline to review a manuscript in the case of insufficient expertise or an existing conflict of interest with the author(s) of the publication.
6. The manuscript is forwarded for peer review only after the editorial board has conducted a preliminary assessment of its compliance with the journal’s scope, adherence to formatting requirements, availability of all supporting documents, successful plagiarism screening, and compliance with ethical standards for scientific works.
7. Reviewers conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the scientific publication based on the following criteria: relevance of the topic, scientific novelty, methodological soundness, reliability of results, logical structure, compliance with ethical standards, correctness of citations, and practical significance of the research. In accordance with DORA recommendations, reviewers assess the content of the scientific publication itself without relying on the journal’s impact factor or other journal-level metrics.
8. Reviews are the primary documents used by the editorial boards of the University’s periodical journals when deciding whether to recommend a publication for dissemination. Structurally, each review must include an overall assessment of the manuscript, detailed comments by the reviewer, recommendations for revision, and the reviewer’s final decision (accept, accept after revision, resubmit for re-review, or reject).
9. Reviewers must adhere to the ethical principles of constructiveness, reasoned argumentation, respect for authors, and the prohibition of using ideas from the manuscript.
10. The journal’s editorial board summarizes the received reviews and sends them to the authors without disclosing the reviewers’ identities. In the case of a positive reviewer recommendation, the editorial board prepares a decision to publish the scientific article in the upcoming issue.
11. In the case of a decision to revise the manuscript, authors are required to make the necessary changes within 14 (fourteen) days, prepare a response to the reviewer’s comments, and resubmit the revised manuscript to the reviewers. Authors must adhere to the ethical principles of transparent consideration of recommendations and provide reasoned responses to the comments. Reviewers assess the extent to which the comments have been addressed. In the event of disputes (if the author(s) disagree with the reviewer’s comments), additional reviewers (both external and internal) may be engaged. In such cases, upon agreement with the Editor-in-Chief, the manuscript is forwarded by the executive secretary of the journal to another reviewer for additional peer review.
12. After the second round of peer review, the editorial board makes a final decision, which is communicated to the author(s) (recommend for publication, recommend after minor revisions, or reject the manuscript). In accordance with COPE principles, the editorial board’s decision must be justified and independent.
13. With the agreement of the authors, the publication recommended by the editorial board for dissemination is sent for language editing, formatting, bibliography checking, ethical compliance review, and metadata verification. The editorial office assigns a unique DOI digital code to each publication and includes the article in the upcoming issue of the journal.
14. The average waiting time for publication in the University’s periodical journals (from the date of submission to the editorial office to the date of publication) is 2–4 months.
15. The post-publication stage provides for the possibility of submitting appeals, retracting a published article, and responding to complaints from interested parties.
