Articles Reviewing Process

The Editorial Board ensures independent expertise (review) of manuscripts. The articles submitted must be written within the scope of the journal and in accordance with the submission guidelines.

The review process include:

1. Expertise by the Executive Editor of meeting the submission requirements. The expertise must be completed within 5 days after the date of submission. All manuscripts undergo anti-plagiarism checker. Those articles that do not correspond the submission guidelines of the journal Translational Medicine have to be rejected. The author (s) must be informed about the rejection of the article for the reason of not meeting the submission requirements.

2. External editing. Translational Medicine follows the pattern of double-blind peer review. The independent reviewers are selected by the Editor-in-Chief, Science Editor or members of the Editorial Board in accordance with the area of expertise. Reviewing is voluntary and unpaid. Independent reviewers must possess a scientific degree of Candidate of Science (PhD) or higher, and must not have any scientific, financial or other relationship with the authors and/or the Editorial Board. Neither author/co-author of the article may be a reviewer nor a scientific supervisor/co-employee of an author/co-author.

At the discretion of the author (s), external review may be presented simultaneously with the manuscript submission, which nevertheless does not prevent from following the general order of review. Review is confidential. All reviewers are informed that the submitted manuscripts are protected by the intellectual property law and their content must not be disclosed. Reviewers must not use the submitted manuscripts for their purposes. Compromising anonymity or confidentiality is only possible in case false or faked data are claimed. Reviewers must follow ethical policy of the journal Translational Medicine published at the Internet site of the journal.

A review may be done on the form suggested by the Editing Office or in any format, but the following items must be covered:

relevancy;
scientific novelty of the area;
practical significance of the problem discussed and/or the findings;
if the research methods are adequate and current;
sufficiency and informative value of the material;
if discussion of the findings is correct and full;
if conclusions match the research objectives;
acceptability of the manuscript volume in the whole and of its parts (text, charts, pictures, references)
adequacy, quality and necessity of the charts and pictures and their relevance;
quality of writing: style: terminology and its adequacy to the one accepted and used in the area.

In the final part of the review, reasoned conclusions about the article in the whole must be provided, and the possibility of its publication (or, otherwise, the necessity of its improvement) must be clearly stated.

In case of negative assessment of the manuscript and the possibility of its publication, a reviewer must provide clear reasons to his/her conclusion.

In case of not meeting one or several submission requirements, a reviewer must highlight the necessity to improve the article and give recommendations to the author about how to make it better listing the mistakes made.

Authors are given an opportunity to read the text of reviews but not the reviewers’ data. A review must be completed within 3 weeks.

3. The Editorial Board provides assessment of the articles being prepared for the publication in the next issue of the journal. The Editorial Board approves the list of articles to be published in the next issue. The Editorial Board has a right to reject an article in case any of its aspects is questionable and to send it for additional review. The reviewer is selected by the Editorial Board and may be its member.

The decision to publish a manuscript approved by experts is made by the Editorial Board.

The Editor-in-Chief and/or his/her Deputy and/or appointed Executive Editor of the issue approve the content of the journal issue after its technical preparation and before printing. The Executive Editor of the issue is appointed by the Editor-in-Chief or his/her Deputy.

Informing Authors of the Review Conclusion

A review may result either in rejection of an article, sending for its further improvement, or its acceptance for publication:

In case of a positive conclusion by reviewers, the level of priority is determined individually for every article. According to this level, the date of publication is decided. In some cases (for example, in case of a narrow topic) publication may be postponed to a specialized issue.
In case of a negative conclusion by reviewers, review copies and a letter explaining the rejection reasons are sent to (an) author (s). In case of discordance of reviewers’opinion, additional review may be decided necessary by the Editorial Board, after which the final decision is made.
If any notes or remarks are made by reviewers concerning article improvement, review copies are sent to (an) author (s). Date of receipt of the primary version of the article is considered as date of submission. The article with the corrections made and a cover letter responding the reviewer must be returned to the Editorial Office no later than four weeks after its receipt. Articles retuned later than 4 weeks may be published in later issues. After the corrections are made, the article is sent for another review, the decision about its publication is made by Editorial Board members.
In case of (an) author (s)’s dissent from the reviewers’ opinion, the author (s) have a right to provide a reasoned response to the Editing Office and/or apply for another reviewing. The article may be sent for additional reviewing to an independent external reviewer or to the members of Editorial Board. In addition, in case of dissent from the reviewers’ opinion, (an) author (s) may withdraw submission of the article, of which the Editorial Office must be informed.
(An) author (s) of the article negatively assessed by reviewer (s) have a right to repeated submission of the manuscript after its improvement. In such case, review is performed according to the normal procedure.
Manuscripts are not accepted if:

Do not meet the submission requirements. If (an) author (s) refuse to corrects technical mistakes, the manuscript may be rejected without external review procedure.
(An) author (s) do not follow reviewers remarks without any reasoned response.

Editorial Office keeps manuscripts for five years.

Editorial Office does not keep rejected manuscripts. The articles accepted for publication are not returned to (an) author (s).

If an inquiry from the Russian Ministry of Education and Science is received, the Editorial Office is prepared to provide review copies.