All submitted articles are subject to an extensive peer-review in consultation with the Journal's Editorial Board members and independent external referees. All manuscripts are evaluated on the basis of their intellectual quality, with in a structured time frame (usually 6 weeks from the date of submission), and the final decision taken by the Journal's Editor-in-Chief, based on the peer-reviewers' reports, is then communicated to the author(s). Reviewers are selected by the handling editors on the basis of their field expertise and practical relevance to the content of the articles to be reviewed by them.
Submissions from the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board Members are no exceptions from our peer review policy. However, external reviewers and decision making bodies are consulted to evaluate their articles and any conflict of interest is thereby excluded.
Peer review process:
All articles right after their submission go through an initial evaluation by a editorial board member (in case of submission from a member of the board an external expert of the field is contacted to perform this task). This handling editor decides about whether the article qualifies for a peer review or is to be returned to the author/declined based on the unsuitability/incompleteness of the article. Editorials or letters, however, may be accepted by the handling editor at this stage. This initial review is planned to be completed within 1 week of submission.
All submissions eligible for peer review process will be forwarded to at least 2 peer reviewers based on their relevance and expertise in the field which the manuscript talks about. These reviewers may be a member of the internal board of the journal or an external referee and a double blind review policy is adopted in which authors and reviewers are kept unknown to each other. This policy helps Lifescience Global keep its review process unbiased to the maximum. However, articles which are self-revealing (e.g., authors giving references to their prior publication) may turn to have a single-blinded review (here reviewer will remain unknown to the author) and the it is the ethical responsibility of reviewers to inform the handling editor if he/she finds some conflict of interest.
Usually peer review takes 4 weeks however, sometime a period of 6 weeks is acceptable owing to some justifiable reason. Based on the reviewers’ reports the handling editor/ EIC/ external editor, appropriately, will decide about acceptance/ revision by the authors/rejection of the article.
Revised articles from authors will be reviewed by the handling editor who may accept these or consult the relevant reviewer for making a decision of acceptance/ rejection/ further revision(maximum 2 rounds of revision may be allowed).
Editors of Lifescience Global journals are allowed to submit their own articles in their journals however, no board member will be involved in the evaluation of their articles and no comments will be shared. These submission are dealt and evaluated by external field experts and reviewers at all stages of publication. The Editor-in-Chief of the journal is responsible for final acceptance/ rejection of these articles on the basis of external reviewers’ reports but, a third party expert opinion is also sought in this regard, as appropriate.
The Guest Editors of special issue focusing on a particular topic, may perform the duties of peer reviewing of some related submissions to his/her special issue which have qualified the initial round of review. However, special consideration is given to avoid any conflict of interest in these circumstances.
The use of electronic submission and peer-review system of Lifescience Global facilitates editors and reviewers during peer review process.
