Peer Review Criteria & Process

We employ an anonymous peer review process, involving staff and postgraduate students from Southern United Academy of Sciences, as well as other academics with subject knowledge appropriate to your submission. Your submission will be anonymously reviewed by two reviewers, and you will receive a Review Opinion Form once your piece has been reviewed.

Submissions may be returned and minor changes requested before we accept the paper. Or, we will accept the paper without requesting any changes. Either way, we endeavour to inform all contributors as soon as a decision has been made regarding their submission. If you are not successful, you are able to request an appraisal of your paper.

Peer review also follows the following rules:

1.Reviewers are unaware of the authors of the manuscript.

2.Authors can request to have the same reviewers for the second or subsequent rounds of review.

3.Supplementary materials typically undergo peer review as well.

4.Review results are not published alongside the formal article.

5.Reviewer names are not reflected in the peer review form, but their internal IDs are.

6.Normally, each article will be reviewed by 2 reviewers. When the conclusions are controversial, the number of reviewers will be increased.

Please note that whether your manuscript is accepted will be determined by the journal editor, taking into account the reviewers’ opinions.

There are five types of review conclusions given by reviewers, namely Reject, Revise & Resubmit, Accept with Major Revision, Accept with Minor Revision, and Accept.

- When any review conclusion of a manuscript is Reject or Revise & Resubmit, we will reject the manuscript.

- When all review conclusions of a manuscript are Accept with Minor Revision or Accept, the editor will decide whether to ask the author to make revisions.

- When any review conclusion of a manuscript is Accept with Major Revision, the author will be asked to make revisions according to the comments.