Reviewer Guidelines

Review content

The purpose of the review is to give a fair evaluation of research and academic text. The review should contain:

  • Reasoned listing of the advantages;
  • Reasoned listing of the shortcomings;
  • Suggestions / comments on the revision of the research and text, if any;
  • General assessment of the article by recommending accept, revise, or reject.

As a result reviewer suggests according to the criteria below:

  • to publish the article without additional revision (accept),
  • to publish the material after minor revision, which could be made by the author, without conducting an additional review round (minor changes)
  • to publish the material after significant revision, which may require an additional round of review (major changes), 
  • to decline, the shortcomings of the article are too significant (reject)

Please pay attention to the way of the research problem is stated, methodology, sources base, the main propositions put forward, interpretation of the results, bibliography and other main content components of the article.

Please pay attention to to the way of the research problem is stated, relevance of the issues within contemporary academic discussion, if the literary source review is sufficient, the design of the empirical strategy, methodology, empirical base, the main propositions put forward, the interpretation of the results and other main content components of the article.

The text of the review should be polite and respectful towards the authors.

The review is prepared in Word document format (.doc or .docx) and sent by reply letter to the scientific editor or through the personal account on the journal's website.

Review procedure

The initial deadline for preparing reviews is up to one month after receiving the text.

If an article does not correspond to the scientific interests and competencies of the reviewers, they inform the Executive editor. 

When recommending "publish the material after revision ...", it is necessary to provide specific comments on improving the text, indicating comments as mandatory (according to reviewer's opinion) or optional.

If the material was sent to the authors for revision, the revised text and a reasoned author(s) response to the reviewer's comments are sent back to the reviewer, who gives his opinion on the changes made to the text and recommends to the Editorial board whether the second version of the article could be published or not.

If the reviewer completely or partially disagrees with the responses of the author, they prepare the following remarks/comments, which is sent to the author. Discussion and revision of the text takes place until both sides agree (usually no more than four rounds), but the Editor-in-Chief, based on the conclusion of the Editorial board and Associated editors, could decide that the responses to the reviewer's comments are satisfactory.

Competing Interests

In case of the competing interests, the reviewer should inform the Executive editor about this and refuse to review. A conflict may be caused by personal relationships, beliefs, and scientific rivalry that prevent an impartial perception, review, and decision-making on the publication of research results.