Peer Review Process

Peer Review Process

African Scientific Journal, shall not accept or publish manuscripts in its journal without prior peer review. There shall be a review process of manuscripts by one or more independent referees who are conversant in the pertinent subject area.

Each submission is checked for suitability when received by the editorial office, and may be rejected without review if it is outside the scope of the journal, is obviously of insufficient quality, or is missing important sections.

Authors should strive for maximum clarity of expression, bearing in mind that the purpose of publication is the disclosure of technical knowledge and that an excessively complex or poorly written presentation can only obscure the significance of the work presented. Material which is not essential to the continuity of the text (e.g., proofs, derivations, or calculations) be placed in Appendices.

The journal invites external experts (not only Editorial Board members) to review each article that is considered suitable for consideration. The publication decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief after receiving at least two external reviewer reports with recommendations.

Authors are encouraged to suggest suitable reviewers, but the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial office reserves the right to select different reviewers. The reason for asking authors to suggest reviewers is that they are best placed to know who is an expert in the field. In addition, the suggested reviewers may be suitable for other articles on the same topic. Therefore, obtaining these names can help the editorial office to ensure that it is approaching suitable people to review all articles.

The journal uses double-blind peer review (neither the authors nor the reviewers know the identity of each other) to avoid bias.

The editor evaluates the recommendation of at least two reviewers and notifies the author of the manuscript status. The manuscript may be:

  1. Accepted for publication with minor changes, with no re-review necessary
  2. Accepted for publication after Major revision
  3. Accepted for publication after substantial revision and additional review
  4. Rejected in current form, but may be resubmitted.
  5. Rejected with no resubmission

The comments of the anonymous reviewers will be forwarded to the authors, and when the authors are ready to submit their revised manuscript, read the comments of the editors and reviewers, and respond to them by telling what modifications they have made in their manuscript or why they have not made the suggested changes.
Note that revisions must be completed and submitted within 1-2 weeks after the authors received the reviewers’ comments. Late manuscripts may be rejected.

The review process shall ensure that all authors have equal opportunity for publication of their papers. Acceptance and scheduling of publication of papers in these periodicals shall not be impeded by added criteria and procedures beyond those contained in the review process.

The editorial board is highly committed to the quick review process of the paper, but not with the sacrifice of the right judgment and quality of a paper. In this sense, the journal aims to make a first editorial decision is usually communicated within 2–4 weeks, The evaluation process requires minimum 20 days (Without delay of first decision).

The detailed evaluation process is as follows:

      1. Receipt of the article by the journal's secretariat;
      2. Sending of the article by the secretariat to the director of the journal and to the scientific director of the journal for attribution of a secret code to the article (Structure: (Date of receipt (year/month/days) + (time of receipt). The process of the evaluation is anonymous (blind);

PRE-EVALUATION :a- Evaluation of plagiarism by two different softwares (the English-French translation is also checked); b- A member of the editorial board will conduct a first reading to assess the conformity of the text with the editorial policy of the journal. The journal is then assigned an evaluation article number.

      1. Double blind (anonymous) external evaluation of the article: The external evaluation is entrusted to two members of the reading committee because of their expertise or by independent evaluators known for their international expertise in the field.
      2. Supplementary evaluation: An evaluation carried out by an expert proposed by the article editors outside their university and who has never participated with them in a published research work. This evaluation is used in case of a positive and a negative evaluation of the article by both evaluators. If the authors are unable to propose an additional reviewer, the director of the journal in consultation with the members of the reading committee will appoint a third reviewer to decide.

i.e: Only the director of the journal and the secretariat of the journal know all the referees so as not to influence the evaluation procedure.

      1. Sending the results of the evaluations and any remarks to the director of the journal. The latter associates the remarks with the article and sends it to the secretariat, which in turn sends the remarks to the author(s) for correction.
      2. Article Processing Charges (APC) are requested only after the manuscript has been accepted for publication. Payment has no influence on the editorial decision;
      3. Verification of the necessary corrections by the reading committee. If some remarks are not respected, the committee sends the article back to the evaluators for study. If the evaluators agree to publication, the article will proceed to the publication stage, if some modifications are necessary, the article is returned to the author for correction.
      4. Publication of the article in the next issue and sending attestations to the author and reviewers.
      5. Duration of evaluation: minimum 25 days maximum 90 days .