Peer Review Process
1. All submitted manuscripts are checked by the Executive Secretary for their compliance with the requirements for submissions, as well as for compliance with the journal's topics. Then the Executive Secretary decides if the submitted manuscripts can be admitted for peer review. Manuscripts that do not meet the requirements or journal’s topics are not accepted for consideration. All manuscripts are checked for plagiarism and self-plagiarism. Within 7 days, the Executive Secretary informs the contributor either about accepting the manuscript for peer review, or about rejecting it for the reasons stated above.
2. All submitted manuscripts, admitted by the Executive Secretary, are put under double-blind peer review (the reviewer does not know the author of the manuscript, the authors do not know the reviewers).
3. Manuscripts are peer-reviewed by members of the Editorial Board or by invited reviewers — leading Russian and foreign experts on relevant topics. The decision to assign a reviewer for the submitted manuscript is made by the Editor-in-chief, his deputies and the Executive Secretary. They are obliged to prevent the conflict of scientific or personal interests of the author of the submitted manuscript with the reviewer. All reviewers of the “Modern History of Russia” journal have a degree of Candidate of Science (“Kandidat nauk”)/PhD or higher. Manuscripts written in English are put under peer-review of specialists who speak English.
4. Reviewers are obliged to give an objective and reasoned assessment of the submitted manuscript. The reviewer should indicate important scientific works that are relevant to the topic of the submitted article and not mentioned in it. The reviewer is obliged to pay attention of the Editorial Board to the similarity of the submitted manuscript to previously published studies, if such is revealed during the peer-reviewing process.
5. The peer-reviewing process takes from 3 to 5 months, depending on the quality of the manuscript’s text.
6. As a result of the peer-review the reviewer presents his decision to the Editorial Board. In this decision the reviewer can:
- recommend the manuscript for publication
- recommend the manuscript for publication only on condition that the contributor will consider the comments of the reviewer and will adequately correct the manuscript
- reject the submitted manuscript
7. The Editorial Board decides to publish the manuscript if both reviews on the submitted manuscripts are positive. The Executive Secretary notifies the contributor that his manuscript has been accepted for publication and indicates the publication date.
8. If the reviewer recommends the submitted manuscript for publication only on condition that the contributor will consider his comments, the Editorial Board proposes to contributor to rewrite his manuscript. The Executive Secretary sends the reviews to the manuscripts’ author without indication of the reviewer’s name. The rewriting of the manuscript should not take more than 2 months. The manuscript, rewritten by the contributor, is put under peer-review again. The manuscript is automatically rejected if contributor refuses to rewrite the manuscript. The manuscript is automatically rejected if contributor fails to rewrite his manuscript within 2 months. The Editorial Board holds no more than two rounds of peer-review for each manuscript. The manuscript is rejected if the reviewers or the editorial board still have claims to the manuscript after the second revision. In the event of serious contradictions between the reviewer and the author of the manuscript the Editorial Board may send the manuscript for additional peer-review. If a conflict situation appears, the decision about the publication of a manuscript is made by the Editor-in-chief.
9. The Editorial Board decides to reject the manuscript if there is at least one negative review. A manuscript that was once rejected cannot be accepted for new revision. The Executive Secretary informs the contributor of this decision by e-mail and sends him the text of the reviews without specifying the names of the reviewers. All rejected manuscripts retain all confidentiality — the data or the ideas cannot be used without the permission of the contributor.
10. Positive reviews are not sufficient for the publication of a manuscript. The final decision on its publication is made by the Editorial Board. The Editorial Board decides whether the manuscript must be published basing on its scientific significance, originality, compliance with the journal’s topics, and taking into account the opinion of the reviewers. The Editorial Board is personally responsible for making such decision in the face of the scientific community.
11. Reviews of manuscripts and correspondence with its authors are not published and are used only in the internal documentation of the journal, as well as in communication with the contributors.
12. The authors who submit the manuscript containing plagiarism or self-plagiarism are blacklisted for 5 years. Their manuscripts will not be taken into consideration during this period.