Peer Review Guidelines
1. General guidelines
1.1. The Editorial Board considers only manuscripts submitted to the Journal’s official e-mail address at vestnik09@spbu.ru.
1.2. All submissions are subject to mandatory initial screening, internal peer review (carried out by members of the Editorial Board), and external peer review.
1.3. The decision about acceptance or rejection of a manuscript is made within ninety days from the date of its submission to the Journal’s e-mail; and is disclosed to the author promptly.
1.4. The manuscript might be rejected by the Journal’s Chief Editor:
1.4.1. if the author is unavailable for more than thirty days;
1.4.2. upon the results of the internal peer review;
1.4.3. upon consideration of the external peer review and the author’s response to the referees. The opinion of the Editorial Board and the Editorial Board about the content and significance of the submitted manuscript may not coincide with the opinion of the author.
Positive referees’ reports do not guarantee acceptance of the manuscript.
1.5. The referees’ reports are filed and kept by the Journal and the Publishing House for a period of five years from: the date of publication of the manuscript; or the date of the Journal’s decision to reject manuscript. The Journal shall send copies of the referees’ reports to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation when requested.
1.6. The referees’ reports of accepted and rejected submissions will be sent to the Saint-Petersburg University Publishing House along with the materials of the respective Journal’s issue. When the referees’ reports are not provided or are incomplete, editing and publishing of the Journal’s issue shall not be carried out.
2. Registration and initial screening
2.1. Registration and initial screening of a manuscript shall be carried out within up to ten days from the date of submission.
2.2. The Board Secretary will register a manuscript submitted to the Journal’s e-mail, specifying the date of its submission.
2.3. The Board Secretary will screen a submitted manuscript for its compliance with the Manuscript Submission Guidelines, making sure that: length and structure of the manuscript is appropriate; the list of references, keywords and abstracts in English and Russian are provided; the formatting of the manuscript fits the requirements; and the author’s details and contact information are included, etc.
2.4. If a manuscript fails to comply with the Manuscript Submission Guidelines, it will be returned to the author for revision.
2.5. The manuscript will be registered and screened. The Board Secretary will then: delete the author’s details from the file of submission; and forward it to the Deputy Editor responsible for the relevant subject field for internal peer review.
2.6. The Deputy Editor will perform the internal peer review if the manuscript corresponds to his scientific profile. Otherwise, he will send the manuscript to a member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field to implement internal expertise.
3. Internal peer review
3.1. The internal peer review of the manuscript compliant with the Journal’s formatting guidelines shall be carried out within twenty days from the date of its submission.
3.2. The internal peer review is carried out by the Deputy Editor or another member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field.
3.3. The Deputy Editor or member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field provides feedback on the manuscript by filling out the Internal Peer Review Form, which requires the referee:
3.3.1. to outline the extent to which the manuscript meets the general standards of academic quality;
3.3.2. to indicate if the manuscript contains any evidence of plagiarism, citation manipulation and other forms of academic misconduct;
3.3.3. to recommend either to accept the manuscript for publication or to reject it;
3.3.4. to suggest a list of potential peer reviewers, specifying their titles, affiliations and contact information.
3.4. After completing the internal peer review, the Deputy Editor or member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field will forward the Internal Peer Review Form to the Board Secretary.
3.5. When the Deputy Editor, or member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field, recommends the rejection of a manuscript, the Chief Editor will decide to reject the submission and will inform the author promptly.
3.6. The Board Secretary will forward a manuscript accepted in the internal peer review to the specified external peer reviewers.
4. External peer review
4.1. The external peer review shall take no more than fifty days from the date of submission of the Internal Peer Review Form.
4.2. All manuscripts cleared by the initial screening and internal peer review are subject to impartial external double-blind peer review by no less than two referees, whose area of expertise is as close as possible to the subject of the submitted manuscript.
4.3. The external peer reviewers will be selected from acknowledged experts who have: a doctoral degree; and publications issued over the last three years in a field relevant to the manuscript’s topic.
4.4. The requirement for selecting a peer reviewer shall be the lack of conflicting interests of the referee and the author of the manuscript. A manuscript cannot be peer reviewed by:
4.4.1. staff members of the author’s academic institution;
4.4.2. the author’s former students or academic advisors;
4.4.3. the author’s former co-authors;
4.4.4. the contributors to research projects in which the author participated.
4.5. In the event any conflict of interest is discovered, the peer reviewer shall inform the Journal and decline to review the manuscript.
4.6. Peer reviewing is double-blind, which means that the author’s identity is not revealed to the reviewer and vice versa.
4.7. The peer reviewer provides his/her feedback by completing the standard form (See External peer review form). It contains questions that require grounded and well-reasoned replies; and provides the guidelines of academic peer reviewing, conditions of confidentiality, etc.
4.8. Upon reviewing a manuscript, the referee should provide detailed and substantiated responses to the following questions:
1. What are the main claims of the manuscript? Are they novel (original) in their content and/or interpretation? If yes, what is new and/or original about them?
2. How does the manuscript correlate with the existent scholarship and current research in the relevant subject field?
3. Is there any evidence of plagiarism or other forms of academic misconduct in the manuscript?
4. Is the text of the manuscript coherent and clear? Do the conclusions conform to the data supplied? Does the structure of the manuscript fit the Journal’s guidelines? Is the language and style appropriate, is the terminology used correctly? Are the tables, charts, figures, etc. illustrative? Do the footnotes, references, and citations of the published and unpublished primary sources conform to the Journal’s guidelines?
5. Would the reviewed manuscript be of interest to the readership of Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University? If yes, what would make the readers interested?
4.9. Based on the results of the manuscript evaluation, the peer reviewer will recommend one of the following options:
— to accept the manuscript for publication in its original form (without any revisions);
— to accept the manuscript for publication once the author has checked the revisions suggested by the referee (the author decides if to apply the revisions or not);
— to accept the manuscript for publication once the reviewers’ revisions are implemented;
— to reject the manuscript with the option of resubmission;
— to reject the manuscript without the option of resubmission.
4.10. The peer reviewer should complete the standard form, print it out, sign it, certify it by seal (or print the form on the letterhead of the referee’s institution), and send it to the Board Secretary as a .doc file (without signature and seal) and as a .pdf file (with signature and seal).
4.11. By decision of the Chief Editor, the manuscript may be sent for additional revision, including the cases of resubmission of the revised manuscript.
4.12. Based upon the recommendations of the peer review, the Board Secretary will forward extracts from reviews, the consolidated list of referees’ criticisms and suggestions, and will recommend the author consider these corrections while revising the manuscript.
4.13. The author should revise the manuscript according to the referees’ comments and/or provide a detailed response to the referees. The author should print out and sign his/her report and forward it to the Board Secretary as a .pdf file.
4.14. If the author forwards the revised manuscript more than thirty days from the date of submission of referees’ reports, the manuscript shall be regarded as a new submission.
5. Decision to accept for publication or reject
5.1. In deciding whether to accept or reject a manuscript, the Chief Editor will consider the revised text of the manuscript, peer reviewers’ reports, and the author’s responses.
5.2. Within ten days, the Board Secretary shall inform the author of the Chief Editor’s decision to accept the manuscript or send him/her substantiated rejection letter.
