EDITORIAL PROCEDURES AND PEER-REVIEW

Pre-check

Immediately after submission, the journal’s Managing Editor will perform the technical pre-check to assess:

• Overall suitability of the manuscript to the journal;
• Submission adherence to high-quality research and ethical standards;
• Standards of rigor to qualify for further review.

The Editor-in-Chief, or an Editorial Board member in the case of a conflict of interest and if the Editor-in-Chief allows will be notified of the submission and invited to perform an editorial pre-check. During the editorial pre-check phase, the editor will assess the suitability of the submission with respect to the scope of the journal, as well as the overall scientific soundness of the manuscript, including the relevance of the references and the correctness of the applied methodology. An editor can decide to reject the manuscript, request revisions before peer review, or continue with the peer-review process and recommend suitable reviewers.

Peer-Review

Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to at least two independent experts for peer-review. A double-blind review is applied, where authors' identities are not known to reviewers. Peer review comments are confidential and will only be disclosed with the express agreement of the reviewer. Invited reviewers may also include Editorial Board Members of the journal. Potential reviewers suggested by the authors may also be considered. Reviewers should not have published with any of the co-authors during the past three years and should not currently work or collaborate with any of the institutions of the co-authors of the submitted manuscript.

Editorial Decision and Revision

All the articles, reviews and communications published in Nauka i tehnologija journal go through the peer-review process and receive at least two reviews, the submission editor, will make one of the following decisions:

• Accept:
  If the submission is accepted, it will go through production processes in order to be published in the journal.
• Minor Revisions:
  The submission is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors must implement minor revisions.
• Major Revisions:
  The acceptance of the submission would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is normally provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within a suitable time frame, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. If the required revision time is estimated to be longer than 2 months, we will recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting so as to avoid unnecessary time pressure and to ensure that all manuscripts are sufficiently revised.
• Reject:
  The submission has serious flaws, and/or makes no original significant contribution. No offer of resubmission to the journal is provided.

All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response

Revised Manuscripts

Manuscripts may be returned to authors for modification of the scientific content and/or for shortening and language corrections.

Authors are given a chance to make revisions to their manuscripts based on the feedback they receive. If a paper that is returned to the authors for amendment is not returned to the Editor in the revised form within one month after a minor and two months after a major revision, the paper will be regarded as withdrawn, unless a request for extension is made to the Editor dealing with the paper. Any revised version received after this deadline will be treated as a new, resubmitted manuscript.

Revised papers are sent back to the Editors who send the revised paper back to the original reviewers. Feedback from the second round of reviews is processed in the same way. The Editor may reject the manuscript if the suggested corrections are not implemented. In rare cases, authors are given a second chance to revise their papers should they not be found acceptable after the first revision.

Resubmitted Manuscripts

If an extensive revision is required, including a requirement for additional experimental work or analysis, the manuscript may be rejected but with a recommendation to resubmit a substantially revised manuscript. A resubmitted manuscript should be submitted as a new manuscript but should include a letter outlining the revisions that have been made in response to the major criticisms of the original article. The article will be treated as a new submission, it will typically be edited by the Editor who dealt with the original manuscript but may not necessarily be reviewed by the same referees.

Production and Publication

Once accepted, the accepted manuscript will undergo professional copy-editing, English editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and, publication on the https://naukaitehnologija.iu-travnik.com website.