Peer Review Process

After the IJCBR editor receives a manuscript, the first step is to confirm that the manuscript meets the journal’s rules for content and format, including similarity check (plagiarism) which should be less than 25%. If the manuscript meets the journal’s rules, the editor then assigns it to the double-blind peer-review process. The IJCBR editor send the manuscript to at least two experts in the field for RIGOROUS scientific evaluation. The experts – called peer reviewers – will then prepare a report that assesses the manuscript and return it to the editor through the IJCBR portal. Upon the first submission, this reviewing process takes about 4 to 6 weeks. After reading the peer reviewer's report, the editor will decide one of the following four options:

1-    Reject the manuscript.

2-    Accept the manuscript

3-    Ask the authors to revise and resubmit the manuscript after responding to the peer reviewers’ feedback.

4-    Ask for peer review from additional reviewers.

If the authors resubmit the manuscript, the IJCBR editor will ask the same peer-reviewers to look over the manuscript again to confirm that their concerns have been addressed. This is called the re-review process. This second revision (if applicable) takes about another 4 to 6 weeks. At this point, the abstract of the article appears in press. The online publication (the PDF format) of the final version of the manuscript takes from 2 to 4 weeks. As such, the total publication cycle takes from 2 to 4 months. This cycle can be reduced to 4 to 6 weeks (fast track publication) for the manuscripts with outstanding findings.

The peer-review process used by IJCBR includes comments on errors in the study’s methods or analysis that raise questions about the findings, or sections that need clearer explanations. The peer-review process also includes the importance and novelty of the manuscript and its interest to the journal’s audience. The IJCBR uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer's and author's identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to submit a Title Page containing the Authors details and Blinded Manuscript with no author details as 2 separate files.

In case of the reviewer has a conflict of interest with the authors he or she should interform the IJCBR editor, Reviewers should treat the reviewed articles confidentially prior to their publication.