All scientific articles are subject to an independent external peer review process prior to their acceptance for publication.
The standard model for the peer review process is double-blind peer review, in which the author’s identity is not disclosed to the reviewer and the reviewer’s identity is not disclosed to the author.
Each paper is assessed by at least two independent reviewers who are not members of the author team nor do they have any conflict of interest in relation to the author or the paper. The requirement for at least two independent reviews complies with the standards of transparent peer review used in high-quality scientific publications.
Reviewers assess, in particular:
- originality and scientific contribution,
- the topicality and relevance of the topic,
- the formulation of the objective and the scientific problem,
- the appropriateness of the methodology used,
- the quality of the argumentation,
- the use of specialist literature and sources,
- the accuracy and persuasiveness of the conclusions,
- the standard of language and presentation,
- the contribution’s alignment with the focus of the proceedings.
The outcome of the peer-review process may be:
- acceptance without amendments,
- acceptance following incorporation of comments,
- revision and a further round of peer review,
- rejection of the contribution.
The editorial board decides on the final acceptance of a manuscript on the basis of peer reviews. The peer-review process does not in itself constitute a guarantee that the manuscript will be published. If the peer reviews are fundamentally contradictory, the editorial board may arrange for a further independent peer review. Reviewers are selected on the basis of their professional expertise and relevant publication record in the field of the manuscript under review.
A reviewer must not review a manuscript if there is a conflict of interest, in particular if:
- they are a co-author of the author during the relevant period,
- they are or have been the author’s supervisor during the immediately relevant period,
- they work at the same institution and there is a risk of a conflict of interest,
- they have a personal, professional or financial interest in the outcome of the review process,
- they are in a competitive or other relationship that may affect their impartiality.
Reviewers are obliged to maintain the confidentiality of the information contained in the manuscript and must not use unpublished information for their own scientific gain. A reviewer is obliged to alert the editorial board to any suspected cases of plagiarism, duplicate publication, citation manipulation or other breaches of publication ethics.
Those papers which are assessed during the peer-review process as being of particularly high quality will be included in the peer-reviewed proceedings of the scientific conference, which the conference organisers will submit for consideration for inclusion in the Web of Science and SCOPUS databases.