Review Process

The practise of peer review is to ensure that only a good research paper is published. All manuscripts are following the procedure outlined below:

Initial Screening

MIJCFT follows the policy of screening papers before sending them for peer review. In the initial screening, the manuscript is reviewed for plagiarism, and poor grammar, outside the aim and scope of the journal. If any paper fails to meet the general requirements, the paper can get rejected. This screening process takes 1-2 weeks and if these papers meet the minimum criteria, then they are passed on to two-three experts for further quality review.

Peer Review Policy

It is a process by which experts evaluate scholarly works and analyze the content. Its objective is to ensure and maintain the high-quality standards of our publishing house.

The Peer Review Policy works as another checkpoint to make sure that only good and original quality work is published. All submitted manuscripts are read by our Editorial Staff who are experienced in their fields. We select only those research papers that meet our standards and are sent for peer review and finally for publication.

Peer reviewers are ideally experts in their fields who are not part of the journal’s editorial staff. When a manuscript is submitted to MIJCFT, a double-blind peer review process is followed to accomplish the basic requirements determined by our protocol.

Double-Blind Review

MIJCFT follows the double-blind review process. In this process, the author and the reviewer are anonymous to each other. The peer-review process helps the publishing organization to select worthy research work for publication. In the peer-review process, the decision to publish a manuscript is the prerogative of a journal editor or the journal's editorial board.

In the broad spectrum, at first read-through reviewers will be assessing the author's argument construction, the clarity of the language and content. They question themselves for the following:

• What is the main question addressed by the research? Is it relevant and interesting?
• How original is the topic? What does it add to the subject area compared with other published material?
• Is the paper well written? Is the text clear and easy to read?
• Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented? Do they address the main question posed?
• If the author is disagreeing significantly with the current academic consensus, do they have a substantial case? If not, what would be required to make their case credible?
• If the paper includes tables or figures, what do they add to the paper? Do they aid understanding or are they superfluous?
• Is the argument well-constructed and clear? Are there any factual errors or invalid arguments?

They may also consider the following:

• Does the title properly reflect the subject of the paper?
• Does the abstract provide an accessible summary of the paper?
• Do the keywords accurately reflect the content?
• Does the paper follow a clear and organized structure?
• Is the paper an appropriate length?
• Are the key messages short, accurate, and clear?

Upon closer readings, the reviewer will be looking for any major issues:

• Are there any major flaws?
• If the experimental design features prominently in the paper, is the methodology sound?
• Is the research replicable, reproducible, and robust? Does it follow best practices and meet ethical standards?
• Has similar work already been published without the authors acknowledging this?
• Are there published studies that show similar or dissimilar trends that should be discussed?
• Are the authors presenting findings that challenge current thinking? Is the evidence they present strong enough to prove their case? Have they cited all the relevant work that would contradict their thinking and addressed it appropriately?
• Are there any major presentational problems? Are figures & tables, language and manuscript structure all clear enough to accurately assess the work?
• Are there any ethical issues?

The reviewer will also note minor issues that need to be corrected:

• Are the correct references cited? Are citations excessive, limited, or biased?
• Are there any factual, numerical, or unit errors? If so, what are they?
• Are all tables and figures appropriate, sufficient, and correctly labeled?

Possible outcomes of peer review

The journal’s editor or editorial board considers the feedback provided by the peer reviewers and uses this information to arrive at a decision. In addition to the comments received from the review, editors also base their decisions on:

• The journal's aims and audience.
• The state of knowledge in the field.
• The level of competition for acceptance and page space within the journal.

Reviewers forward the review report to the Editor in chief, who will make a final decision to accept or reject the article. Once the Editor-in-Chief makes the decision on the manuscripts presented for review, the decision will be one of the following:

• Accept
• Accept with minor revision
• Revise and Resubmit
• Reject

Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, we will send the Acceptance Letter, and publication copyright agreement to the author. After receiving the publication copyright agreement, we will forward the final proofread manuscript to the author for approval through email. At this point, the author can send some minor suggestions/corrections in terms of the formatting of the manuscript.

We will resend the proofread manuscript for final approval. Once the final approval is received back from the author, the manuscript will be sent for the final publication process.

If an author is asked to revise their manuscript and the author sends us an updated manuscript, it will be considered a new submission in terms of initial screening but the updated manuscript will be sent to the same reviewers to review again.

The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision to reject the manuscript and conveys it to the author.

How long it takes to complete the review process?

MIJCFT follows a policy of screening papers before sending them for peer review. In the initial screening, manuscripts get rejected because of plagiarism, poor grammar and being outside the aims and scope of the journal. MIJCFT completes the initial screening of a manuscript within 1-2 weeks. Those manuscripts that meet the minimum criteria are normally passed on to two-three experts for review.

We send a manuscript for review to two-three reviewers simultaneously. Normally it takes 3-4 weeks to complete the review process. The average time from submission to publication is around 60 days.