Below is the editorial workflow that every submitted manuscript to the journal will put up with during the course of the peer-review activity:
Immediately as manuscript is submitted for publication, the manuscript will be scrutinize by the editorial office to make certain that it is suitable to undergo normal peer review process. After this, the manuscript will be forwarded to an fitting Editor based on the subject area of the manuscript. Every manuscripts shall be handled by an Editor who does not have any prospective conflict of interest with author(s).
If the Editor detects that the manuscript may not be of sufficient quality to go through the normal peer review process, or that the subject of the manuscript may not be appropriate for the journal’s scope, the manuscript shall be rejected with no further processing.
If the Editor finds that the submitted manuscript falls within the scope of the journal, the manuscript will be assigned to a number of external reviewers, provided there is no existence of conflict of interests between reviewers and the author(s). The reviewers will then submit their reports on the manuscripts along with their recommendation/decision of one of the following actions to the Editor:
Publish Unaltered, Consider after Minor corrections, Consider after Major corrections, Reject when Manuscript is flawed or not sufficiently novel.
When all reviewers have submitted their reports, the Editor can make one of the following editorial recommendations:
Publish Unaltered, Consider after Minor corrections, Consider after Major corrections, Reject.
If the Editor advocates “Publish Unaltered,” the manuscript will undergo a final check by the journal’s editorial office in order to ensure that the manuscript and its review process adhere to the journal’s guidelines and policies. Once this is done, the authors will be notified of the manuscript’s acceptance.
If the Editor advocates “Consider after Minor Changes,” the authors are notified to prepare and submit a final copy of their manuscript with the required minor changes suggested by the reviewers. The Editor reviews the revised manuscript after the minor changes have been made by the authors. Once the Editor is satisfied with the final manuscript, the manuscript can be accepted.
If the Editor advocates “Consider after Major Changes,” the advocation shall be communicated to the authors. The authors are expected to revise their manuscripts in line with the changes recommended by the reviewers and to submit their revised manuscript in a timely manner. Once the revised manuscript is submitted, the Editor can then make a recommendation which can be as listed below:
“Publish Unaltered,” “Consider after Minor Changes,” or “Reject.”
If the Editor advocates rejecting the manuscript, the rejection is immediate. Also, if the majority of the reviewers recommend rejecting the manuscript, the rejection is immediate.
The aforementioned process gives the Editors the ascendancy to reject any manuscript because of unbecomingness of its subject, lack of quality, or incorrectness of its results. The Editor cannot assign himself/herself as an external reviewer of the manuscript. This is to ensure a high-quality, fair, and unbiased peer-review process of every manuscript submitted to the journal, since any manuscript must be recommended by one or more (usually two or more) external reviewers along with the Editor in charge of the manuscript in order for it to be accepted for publication in the journal.
The peer-review process is single blinded; in this process, the reviewers know who the authors of the manuscript are, but the authors do not have access to the information of who the peer reviewers are. Every journal published by Prime Scholars Library has an acknowledgment for the researchers who have performed the peer-review process for one or more manuscripts in the past year. Without the scholarly contributions made by these researchers, the publication of the journal would not be possible.