Peer-Review Process

  2. Peer-Review Process
  1. The purpose of reviewing (peer review) manuscripts of scientific articles is to maintain the journal’s high scientific and theoretical level and select the most relevant scientific papers.
  2. To ensure fairness and confidentiality, the journal “Bulletin of Problems in Biology and Medicine” employs the principle of Double-blind peer review (two-sided “blind” (anonymous) review):
  • the reviewer is not informed of the personal data of the author(s);
  • the author/authors are not provided with the reviewer’s personal data.
  1. The primary expert evaluation of a scientific article submitted to the editorial board is carried out by the editor-in-chief or executive secretary of the journal. At this stage, the correspondence of the submitted material to the journal’s profile, completeness and its design following the Structure of the Paper and Manuscript Submission Guidelines, set out on the website, is assessed.
  2. The editor-in-chief (executive secretary) determines the reviewer from among the members of the editorial board who supervise the relevant scientific area. Without an editorial board member who supervises the appropriate area, the editor-in-chief (executive secretary) appoints an external reviewer for the paper. Reviewers (both members of the editorial board and external) should be leading experts in the relevant fields of Dentistry, Biology, and Medicine and have publications in this field of research (preferably in the last 5 years). Each reviewer has the right to refuse to review if an apparent conflict of interest affects the perception and interpretation of the manuscript materials.
  3. After the expert evaluation of the scientific article, the reviewer may make the following decisions:
  • recommend the article for publication;
  • recommend the article for publication after revision by the author, taking into account the comments and suggestions made;
  • indicate the need for additional review by another specialist;
  • not recommend the article for publication.

If the reviewer recommends the article for publication after its revision, taking into account the comments, or does not recommend it for publication, the review should clearly state the reason for this decision.

The editors recommend using an independently developed standard review form when reviewing.

  1. Reviewers should evaluate: 
  • relevance of the scientific problem raised in the article;
  • methodological level of the article;
  • scientific, theoretical and applied (if any) significance of the research performed;
  • correctness of the mathematical calculations, graphs, and figures;
  • correlation of the author’s conclusions with existing scientific concepts;
  • compliance by the authors with the requirements of scientific ethics and the correctness of references to literary sources.
  1. The reason for sending a scientific article for additional review may be:
  • insufficient qualification of the expert in the issues considered in the scientific article;
  • insufficiently high level of the primary expert opinion;
  • sharp controversy of the provisions expressed in the scientific article.
  1. The reviewer sends the completed review to the editorial office by e-mail as a scanned copy.
  2. The editorial board sends the authors copies of the reviews (without the reviewer’s personal data, to comply with the principle of double-blind review) or a reasoned refusal of the editorial board to publish this particular manuscript.