Peer Review Process

Scientia Ricerca relies on the peer review process to uphold the quality and validity of individual articles and the journals that publish them. This journal uses double-blind peer review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. The idea is that everyone should get a similar and unbiased review to maintain standards of quality, improve performance, and provide credibility.

While the peer review process is unlikely to change the basic nature of a given submission, in many cases the authors may add analysis or results, clarify thoughts or parameters, revise the statistical testing methods, increase the number of subjects, or lengthen the time of clinical follow‐up in response to reviewer's requests. Most typically, thoughtful comments provided by reviewers lead to improvements in the presentation of the work in several ways: clarity in writing and descriptions are enhanced, relevant literature is discussed more thoroughly, limitations of methodology are acknowledged, and broad or over‐reaching conclusions are moderated. This can only happen when knowledgeable reviewers take time to participate in the peer review process and evaluate submissions with care and sensitivity. The editors and reviewers of Scientia Ricerca are committed to utilization of a stringent yet fair review process in order to assist those who submit scholarly work for publication.

The Peer Review Process: The procedure described here is the process used by Scientia Ricerca with manuscript submissions. Once an author submits a manuscript through the online submission process, it is checked to make sure that the submission is complete and has been prepared according to the Scientia Ricerca submission instructions. At this time a receipt of manuscript acknowledgement is sent to the author to let them know that their manuscript has been received. Each manuscript is then read by an editor (either individually or in consultation) to assess its suitability for the journal according to the guidelines determined by the editorial policy. This is an important step to ensure that whether the content falls within the scope of the journal, the manuscript follows editorial policy and procedural guidelines, and that it does not contain an unacceptable level of overlap with manuscripts that are already in press. A manuscript could be rejected without additional review for one or more of the previous reasons, and the author notified.

While manuscripts can be rejected without involving additional reviewers, they cannot be accepted for publication without additional review. So if a manuscript is not rejected when first received, it is then sent out for review to a minimum of two additional reviewers who are part of the journal's cadre of reviewers. With a double‐blind peer review the identity of the authors is masked during the review process. Both the authors and the reviewers are unaware of each other's identity. Once reviewers are chosen and they accept their review assignment, the real process begins.

The reviewers return their recommendations and reports to the editor (via the online submission system), who assesses them collectively, and then makes a decision, either on his or her own or in consultation with other editors on whether to reject the manuscript (either outright or with encouragement to resubmit), to withhold judgment pending major or minor revisions, to accept it pending satisfactorily completed revisions, or to accept it as written. Rarely, if ever, is a manuscript accepted as written! For manuscripts accepted pending revision, the authors must submit a revised manuscript that will go through all or some of the stages above.

Once a manuscript has been revised satisfactorily (more than one revision may or may not be allowed) it will be accepted and put into the production process to be prepared for publication. An outline of this process can be seen in Figure Despite the apparent simplicity in this process, the actual steps may be quite elaborate and involve a number of people and alternative procedures, thus requiring substantial time to complete.