Peer Review Process

1. Submission of Manuscript

Submitted articles must adhere to the Guidelines for Authors, which are also included in the Author’s Guide.

2. Initial Evaluation Procedures

Once submitted, your manuscript will be assigned to the Editor. Manuscripts that fall within the scope and adhere to the editorial policies of the journal (Guidelines for Authors) will be assigned to Section Editors, who will invite external reviewers for a double-blind review. If the manuscript does not meet these criteria, it will be rejected and archived. The journal follows ethical guidelines regarding plagiarism checks.

3. Section Editors

Once the initial procedure is passed, manuscripts will be assigned to Section Editors. These are researchers with expertise in the specific area of the article, and they will share the manuscript with external reviewers who are within the scope of the article, contributing valuable feedback. Section Editors will assign two or more external reviewers for the manuscript evaluation. The review follows a double-blind peer review policy.

4. Double-Blind Peer Review (External Reviewers)

During peer review, reviewers can access the manuscript securely via the online system, maintaining anonymity for both the reviewers and the authors. This is called Double-Blind Peer Review, where no information about the authors is shared with the reviewers during the document review.

During submission, authors may indicate a limited number of scientists who should not review the article. These excluded scientists must be identified by name. Authors may also suggest potential reviewers; while these suggestions are helpful, they are not always followed. If no reviewers are recommended, we will use reviewers from our database and match them with researchers in the relevant field.

Reviewers' recommendations may include (Reject – Not Relevant – Recommend to another journal – Major Revisions Needed – Accept).

5. Decisions After Review

After evaluating the manuscript and receiving the reviewers' reports, the assigned Section Editor will make one of the following decisions:

• Accepted: Minor revisions are required, and authors should revise the manuscript to address specific concerns.
• Major Revisions Needed: Major revisions are requested, and authors must address significant concerns and possibly conduct additional work. The revised manuscript should be submitted via the initial submission link, not as a new manuscript. The revision should also include a point-by-point response to the reviewers, explaining how the manuscript was altered. Accepted manuscripts will undergo a new round of review before being accepted for publication. Articles with the decision Major Revisions Needed are not accepted and may be rejected if the authors fail to address ethical guidelines.
• Rejected: The article is declined, and reasons will be provided. The manuscript may be resubmitted at a later time.

6. Final Submission and Acceptance

Once the article is marked as Accepted and all editorial issues are resolved, the work will be formally accepted for publication. The receipt date mentioned in the article will be the date when the original article passed our standard quality control checks based on the journal's submission criteria. The acceptance date declared in the article will be the date when the Editorial Board member sent the acceptance email.

After acceptance, authors will receive proofs of their manuscript, but only changes to the title, author list, or scientific errors will be allowed. Corrections must be checked by the layout designers. Issues regarding figure, table, and equation sizes may also be revised for better manuscript visualization.

7. Appeals

Authors may request the Editorial Board to reconsider a rejection decision. Appeals are considered as secondary priority due to the workload of the journal. Therefore, responses to appeals may take longer. Final decisions regarding appeals will be made by the Editorial Board member handling the article.

About Article Rejection

• REJECTION AND RESUBMISSION TIMEFRAMES:
  • A) As outlined in the Basic Author Guidelines, manuscripts that do not adhere to the journal format (no header, improper formatting, etc.) will not be evaluated and can only be resubmitted after a 4-month interval.
  • B) Manuscripts rejected for missing documents can be resubmitted after 3 months.
  • C) Manuscripts rejected due to reviewers' requests can be resubmitted after 5 months.
  • D) Manuscripts rejected due to reviewers' recommendations for a partner journal can be resubmitted after 3 months (corrected).
  • E) Manuscripts with editorial decision applied, if the requested revision is not submitted or the corresponding author does not justify their absence, will be rejected within 1 month. They may be resubmitted after 6 months, mentioning the previous submission number in the author's comments.
  • F) Articles in exceptional situations and rejected will not have further opportunities for resubmission to RVBMA.