Reviewing procedure

The procedure of reviewing the articles submitted conforms with the recommendations of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education included in the study “Good practices of the review procedures in science,” Warsaw 2011 (“Dobre praktyki w procedurach recenzyjnych w nauce”, Warszawa 2011) and with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

• The articles submitted online through the system will be preliminarily assessed by the Editorial Team. If the article is found consistent with the journal profile and meets the requirements specified in the “Guidelines for Authors” (“Wskazówki dla Autorów”), it will be passed for further procedure. If otherwise, the submitting author will be informed about such a fact.
• The Editor-in-Chief, assisted by the editors dealing with specific subjects, will select three reviewers from among recognized experts in the subject matters under consideration.
• The reviewers selected (with affiliations different from those of the authors) must guarantee that they are independent and free of any conflict of interest with the authors of the works reported (i.e. free of any direct personal relationship, any official subordination, or any scientific cooperation for at least two years preceding the preparation of the review).The reviewers will be so selected that they will not be affiliated to units seated in the same country.
• The reviewers will receive the article through the system and, upon their consent (which should be expressed within a time as defined by the Editorial Team), they will prepare their reviews within not more than 1 month.
• Reviewers are paid 50 euros for each evaluated paper.
• The review will be prepared within a “double-blind review process”, i.e. the authors will not know reviewers’ identities and vice versa. During the review process, the principle of confidentiality will be observed. The reviewers’ names will be kept secret.
• At author’s request, the reviewer’s name may be made open to the public, but exclusively with the reviewer’s consent.
• The review forms completed will be sent by the reviewers online through the system to the Editorial Team.
• The review has to be ended with an explicit conclusion whether the article may be accepted for publication or should be rejected.
• The authors will be informed about the review results and the review will be made available for them. The authors should respond to reviewers’ comments within a time as defined by the Editorial Team.
• The reviewer will clearly state whether the article should be re-reviewed after corrections. If the answer is affirmative, the re-review of the article should be done by the same reviewer.
• For an article to be published in the journal, it must receive three accepting reviews. If one negative opinion is issued about an article under review, an additional reviewer will be called. In the case of two negative reviews having been given, the authors will be informed that the article has been rejected and cannot be published in the journal.
• Once a year, a list of the reviewers who worked for the journal will be made public (i.e. published in the journal and on the website) by the Editorial Team.

The reviewers will express their opinions about individual issues listed below, with adding appropriate explanations for each of them:

• Does the paper reviewed come within the range of Quarterly’s subjects?
• Does the title of the paper correspond to its content?
• Have the topic and issues presented in the paper been appropriately explained with reference to the current world’s state of knowledge?
• Has the objective of the paper been clearly defined?
• Are the research results presented innovative in worldwide terms?
• Have the results presented considerable importance for the development of knowledge and innovativeness and do they open new prospects in the specific area?
• Are the bibliography selection and analysis appropriate and sufficient?
• Has the list of references been arranged correctly?
• Are the illustrating materials adequately clear and have they been appropriately selected?
• Does the summary correctly represent the paper’s content?
• Has the paper been prepared with due diligence, correctly as regards style, and in conformity with Editorial Team’s requirements?
• Have the keywords been correctly selected?
• Are any formal, editorial, graphic, or content-related errors present in the paper?
• Is the scientific level of the paper sufficiently high for publication in the journal?
• Other remarks on the paper.
• Final assessment of the paper.

The statistical reviewers will express their opinions about individual issues listed below, with adding appropriate explanations for each of them:

• Does the number of self-citations, presented in the article, is below the preferred value? (it is preferred one self-citation for twenty reference items)?
• It is preferred to include in the article more than 50% of all citations from the Scopus and Web of Science database.
• Does the article contain all references?
• Are the websites indicated in the references correct ? Do such websites exist? Is the date of an access to the webpage specified?
• Do the references have a complete bibliographic description? (there must be also numbers DOI given).
• Are the statistical issues correctly defined and correctly calculated? (The statistical editor analyses original papers for which statistical methods are used and controls the correctness of statistical methods carried out by authors).
• Other editorial comments.

The language editors will express their opinions about English language level with adding appropriate explanations.

The papers that will not come within the range of Quarterly’s subjects will be rejected.