Peer Review

Peer Review

All scientific articles submitted to the editorial office of the Journal of the Institute for African Studies undergo a peer review process, during which the originality and quality of the manuscript are evaluated. The peer review process involves several stages:

1) Internal (in-house) review. This is carried out by the Editorial Staff, including the Editor-in-Chief, his Deputies and the Executive Secretary. At this stage, the material is preliminarily evaluated and may be rejected for the following reasons:

– the manuscript does not correspond to the editorial policy, subject or profile of the Journal;

– the content of the manuscript does not correspond to the declared topic;

– the submitted manuscript does not meet the design requirements;

– inconsistency of the proposed material with the nature and level of a scientific article (lack of scientific apparatus);

– low quality of the material (ignorance of the main sources and literature on the topic, weak factual and evidence base, lack of methodology, unconvincing conclusions, repetition of conclusions and theses well known in the scientific literature on the subject, etc.);

– low level of originality of the article.

2) External review. The manuscript, which has passed the internal editorial review process, is sent for external review to at least three prominent experts in the subject area, who have publications on the subject of the reviewed article, including, as a rule, two external (not from the Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences) reviewers. A double-anonymous model of peer review is used, i.e. neither the author nor the reviewers know the identity of each other.

The review period is as a rule 2-4 weeks, but it can be extended at the request of the reviewer. Each reviewer has the right to refuse to review a manuscript in case of obvious conflict of interests that can affect the perception and interpretation of the manuscript materials.

The Editorial Office of the Journal takes into account the reviewer’s opinion when making a decision regarding the publication of the manuscript, as well as the necessity for the author to take into account the reviewer’s comments when revising the text.

3) Manuscript revision. The Editorial Office sends the author the texts of at least two reviews received. If there are recommendations for the revision of the manuscript, the editorial office suggests to take them into account when preparing a new version of the manuscript or to refute them in a reasoned (partially or completely) way in a reply letter. The revision of the article should not take more than one month from the moment of sending an e-mail message to the authors about the need to make changes. In the case of serious corrections, the article finalized by the author is resubmitted for review.

If the authors refuse to revise the materials, they should notify the Editorial Office in writing about withdrawal of the article from consideration. The Editorial Office will be forced to withdraw the manuscript from consideration if the authors do not submit a revised version of the manuscript within three months from the date the Editorial Office sends a message about the results of the reviewers’ review of the manuscript with recommendations for revision. In such cases, the authors are notified about the withdrawal of the manuscript from consideration due to the expiry of the time allotted for revision.

The Editorial Office conducts no more than three rounds of review for each manuscript. If after three times of revision of the manuscript the majority of reviewers or the Editorial Office still have significant comments on the text, the manuscript is rejected and withdrawn from consideration. In this case, the authors are notified about the withdrawal of the manuscript from consideration.

4) Disputes and disagreements. If the author and reviewers have irresolvable contradictions regarding the manuscript, the Editorial Office in agreement with the Editorial Board and the Editor-in-Chief may send the manuscript for additional review. In case of conflict, the decision to publish the manuscript is made by the Editor-in-Chief at the meeting of the Editorial Board.

The decision not to publish a manuscript is made at the meeting of the Editorial Board in accordance with the recommendations of the reviewers. The article not recommended for publication by the decision of the Editorial Board is not accepted for reconsideration. The message about the refusal in publication and withdrawal of the manuscript from consideration is sent to the author by e-mail, the letter contains the reviewers’ recommendations and the reasons for the refusal in publication.

After the Editorial Board of the Journal makes a decision on the article admission for publication, it informs the author about it and specifies the terms of publication, asking the author to submit the version of the article in the second language.

The presence of a favourable review is not a sufficient basis for publication of the article. The final decision on publication is made by the Editorial Board. In conflict situations, the decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief.

 

During the review process, each reviewer fills in a standard form that allows an objective and unbiased assessment of the article according to a number of criteria, including:

  1. the relevance of the topic
  2. the scientific novelty of the topic and originality of its presentation
  3. the extent of coverage of the problem under consideration
  4. the compliance with academic requirements (availability and quality of abstracts, references, correctness of citations)
  5. the completeness of the review of publications on the topic addressed by the author
  6. the scientific fundamentality.

Each of the six criteria is rated quantitatively (from 0 to 5 points) and based on these evaluations the reviewer assigns a final score for the article according to a five-point system. In addition, the strengths and weaknesses of the article are separately indicated, as well as specific recommendations for improving the article.

Based on the scores assigned, the reviewer makes one of five possible final recommendations:

5 – the paper is ready for publication;

4 – to be published after minor revision by the author;

3 – to be published after major revision;

2 – needs an additional review by an expert in a certain field (please specify the field);

1 – should not be published.

If there are comments, the reviewer describes them in detail and gives constructive suggestions for their correction. In some cases, if the review contains insulting statements about the author and personal attacks, the Editorial Office reserves the right to moderate certain parts of the reviewer’s comments.

 

Reviewers in their work are guided by the principles formulated by the Committee on the Ethics of Scientific Publications and observe:

In reviewing, the editors proceed on the basis of the following principles:

  • confidentiality (the inadmissibility of the transfer or familiarization of third parties who do not have the appropriate authority from the Editorial Office with the text of the review);
  • efficiency and objectivity of work,
  • reasoning of the evaluation of the research results;
  • verification of specified sources of information;
  • unconditional identification and exclusion of conflicts of interest, including the absence of official and other links between the reviewer and the author.

The text of the review is preserved in the Editorial office of the Journal for five years. Since 2024, all reviews are also uploaded in anonymised form (without the reviewers’ full names and review texts) to the “Russian Science Citation Index” (RSCI). Copies of the reviews can be transferred to the Ministry of Higher Education and Science of the Russian Federation (to the Russian Academy of Sciences) upon request.