The Initial Review will be done by the assigned Editor (Chief Editor, Associate Editor 1, or Associate Editor 2). The Editor will assign 3 Reviewers derived from the pool of editorial board members and external review experts to start the Peer review process. Reviewer comments from at least 2 Reviewers will be mandatory before reaching the initial decision of Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision or Reject and Resubmit. The final editorial review will be done by the Chief Editor. 

Flowchart

  

 

Details (please refer to the flowcharts above)

JMUST follows a single-blind peer review system. 

Upon submission of the manuscript, it is subjected to a plagiarism check by the JMUST platform. Only articles with a plagiarism score of less than 10% (excluding References) are considered ready for the review process.

The handling editor assigns 3 Reviewers derived from the pool of editorial board members and external review experts to start the Peer review process.

The reviewers receive an invitation to review the article; they can accept or decline the invitation to review the article. The invitation is valid for 2 weeks. Email reminders are sent regularly till the reviewers either accept/decline the invitation. If a reviewer does not accept the invitation, it is automatically treated as declined. If the reviewer has a competing interest in regard to the assigned manuscript, (s)he should state so and decline to review the manuscript.

When a reviewer declines an invitation, the editor is notified and (s)he can invite additional peer reviewers if required. 

After accepting the invitation, the peer reviewer can immediately review the article in detail and provide feedback. The reviewer provides detailed comments in addition to answering a questionnaire that can be filled out during the review of the article. The reviewer provides comments for the author and confidential comments for the editor. 

The reviewer rates the impact of the article using the star rating system. (S)he recommends whether the article can be “Accepted as is”, or with “Minor revisions” or “Major revisions” or should be “Rejected and Resubmitted”. 

The reviewer also indicates if (s)he would like to re-review the article after it is revised and re-submitted.

After the review process is completed, the editor reviews the feedback and decides whether to accept the article or seek revisions or reject it. At this point the editor may still choose to invite expert reviewers related to the manuscript in regard to content and methodology; e.g., a statistician. If the article requires revisions, the editor sends the manuscript back to the author with review feedback and his/her own comments and suggestions.

The author revises the manuscript (using the online editing facility) and submits the revised article. The author can also choose to withdraw the submission at this point.

When the author re-submits the revised manuscript, the editor reviews the revision and if reviewers have requested to re-review after revision, sends the manuscript for re-review. Based on reviewer feedback, the editor seeks revisions/corrections or accepts or rejects the article.

If the article is accepted, the manuscript is sent to the Chief Editor for final review. After review, the Chief Editor initiates copy editing and decides on article publication charges where applicable. Copyedited manuscripts are signed off by the authors and the editors before finally being approved by the Chief Editor for publication.

 

Email notifications

JMUST employs email notifications to alert the authors, editors, and reviewers whenever a new task is assigned to them. For example, notifications are sent 

1. To the editor when a new manuscript is submitted for review

2. To the peer reviewers when the editor assigns peer reviewers for reviewing the manuscript

3. To the editor when the peer reviewer completes the review or declines the review

4. To the editor when all the peer reviewers have completed their reviews

5. To the author when the editor requests revision or accepts the article or rejects it

6. To the editor when the author re-submits or withdraws the manuscript

7. To the reviewers, if the editor requests a re-review of the article

8. To the copyeditor when the editor assigns a manuscript for copyediting

9. To the author when the chief editor finally accepts the article for publishing

The above is a list of important email notifications that help move the review workflow forward.