ARTICLES’ PEER REVIEWING REGULATIONS

General provisions

The procedure of peer reviewing of the articles submitted to “Opticheskii Zhurnal” editorial office is intended to ensure the quality of the published articles. All articles submitted to the editorial office are peer reviewed.

The review should provide an overall and unbiased assessment of the presented article as well as the analysis of its strengths and shortcomings.

Both the members of the editorial board of the journal and independent reviewers holding, as a rule, a candidate or doctorate degree, experienced enough in scientific work in the declared scientific field, familiar with the requirements of the journal’s editorial staff to the published materials are engaged.

It is common practice that the reviewer and the author (authors) of the article do not work in the same organization. The editorial staff tries to avoid “the conflict of interest” of the authors and the reviewers.

The length of the review is not regulated; however, it should not be longer than 1-2 sheets of typescript text.

When the article’s manuscript is submitted to the editorial office, the authors are notified about the peer reviewing procedure. The names and the places of work of the reviewers are kept confidential.

The amount of the presented reviews is determined by the editorial staff. Usually, one review is enough to make a decision on publication. Additional reviewers are engaged in case the article’s subject is at the nexus of different sciences or scientific fields. Upon the receipt of the first review an additional peer reviewing may be arranged by the decision of the editor-in-chief.

The peer reviewing of the articles in “Opticheskii Zhurnal” is not paid.

Peer reviewing procedure

All the articles’ manuscripts submitted to the editorial office are registered, then the editor-in-chief or its deputy looks through them and decides to forward the manuscript to one of the editorial board members.

The members of the editorial board have the right to peer review the articles themselves or they can make a suggestion on forwarding the article to a reviewer (reviewers), who is (are) an expert in a scientific area of the article.

The review should not exceed 1 month from the date of receipt of the article by the reviewer.

The review is presented in free form or according to the enclosed form. The review is submitted to the editorial office in typescript with personal signature of the reviewer or by e-mail from the reviewer’s e-mail address.

The review is considered by the editorial board that takes one of the following decisions:

- to accept the article for publication without alterations;

- to send the article for additional peer review;

- to send the article back to the author for alterations in accordance to the reviewer’s remarks;

- to reject the article (with obligatory argumentation).

It is obligatory that the authors of the articles read the reviews, for this purpose the assistant editor sends the text of the review with the cover letter, and also the text of the article with the reviewer’s remarks to the author (authors).

The reviewer’s personal information is not disclosed.

The review is sent to the author (the authors) by e-mail with read notification. The confirmation of receipt of the review by the author (the authors) is considered to be the fact of studying the review.

The author of the article may present a motivated disagreement with the peer review results. The decision on further reviewing of the article is taken by the editor-in-chief or its deputy.

In case the authors of the article agree with the reviewer’s remarks, they can make the corresponding alterations and resubmit the article. The authors are recommended to present a written response to the reviewer’s remarks. The article is peer reviewed again. The date of receipt of the article by the editorial office is the date of its latest submission after alteration.

In case the remarks are insignificant and require only editorial alterations with consent of the author, a decision on publication of the article can be made.

Review content

The review can be written in free form or according to the enclosed form, but it is obligatory that it contains the following aspects:

- the article’s compliance to the journal’s subject area;

- the topicality of the problems considered in the article;

- the correspondence of the presented results to the declared subject of the article;

- the completeness of the literature review:

• the adequacy of the references to the works by other authors that allows to correctly determine the place of the article among other publications,
• the adequacy of the references to the sources revealing the theoretical and methodological bases of the presented work;

- the authors’ contribution: the presence and significance of novel scientific results obtained by the author (a group of authors) and presented in the article;

- the validity of the conclusions;

- the presence of clear and comprehensible rubrication;

- the completeness, validity and accuracy of the applied mathematical tools and theoretical bases;

- the accuracy of the terminology, the clarity of presentation, the narrative style;

- the completeness and clarity of the presented graphic materials, the application of physical units of measurement of the International System of Units or admitted for application along with them.

All the remarks are grouped point by point for consideration convenience.

The review is concluded by one of the following recommendations:

- on possibility of publication of the article without alterations;

- on possibility of publication of the article with the author’s alterations (without the additional reviewing);

- on possibility of publication of the article with the author’s alterations (with the additional reviewing);

- on essential rework of the article; the possibility of its publication should be considered after new peer review;

- on refusal of publication of the article.

The final decision on publication of the article is taken by the editorial board taking into account the review (reviews) and the motivated response of the author (authors) of the article.

All reviews are kept in the editorial office in written form for 5 years. Copies of the reviews can be issued upon the request of the Ministry of education and science of the Russian Federation.