Double-Blind Peer Review

Stages of double-blind peer review:

I. Preliminary check up
II. Review
III. Copy-editing
IV. Layout editing

I. Preliminary check up

1. The manuscript arrives at the editor. We confirm the received manuscript.
2. The editor checks the anonymity of the manuscript and checks whether the text follows basic scholarly standards and our author guidelines to the extent that it can be given out for review.

If the manuscript is appropriate, it moves to the next work phase.
If the manuscript is not appropriate, it is returned.
If the manuscript is not appropriate for the second time, the paper is not published. 

II. Review

1. The editor sends a request to two reviewers who are in no institutional or professional relationship with the author that could cause a conflict of interest (cf. Declaration of Ethics). Reviewers have maximum one month for writing the review; in certain cases the required time might be longer.
2. The reviewers choose one of the following three suggestions: (A) to be published with insignificant corrections; (B) to be published only after significant revision; (C) not to be published even after revision. Reviewers also prepare a detailed evaluation, especially if they have chosen option (B) or (C).
3. The reviewers send their evaluations to the editor using the evaluation sheet of the journal (and, if they wish to, in corrections with tracking in the manuscript), the editor checks these.
4. On the basis of the results of the reviews, the editor acts as follows:

If both reviewers choose option (A): the editor sends minor suggestions to the author and requests finalisation of the text.

If one or both reviewers choose option (B): the editor forwards anonymous reviews to the author and they discuss the time required for revision. If this is longer than the time available before the deadline for the next issue, they discuss publication in a later issue.

If one reviewer chooses option (C), and the other one chooses (A) or (B): the editor asks for a third review. Further steps are taken according to which option is supported by the third reviewer: if (C) is chosen, the paper will not be published; if (B) is chosen, the paper can be published after revision; if (A) is chosen, the paper can be published, but revision is recommended in the sense that the author fine-tunes the text considering suggestions from the reviewer who chose option (C).

If both reviewers choose option (C): the paper is not published.

III. Copy-editing

1. The author sends the finalised manuscript to the editor.
2. The text is handled by a professional copy-editor (in Word tracking).
3. The copy-edited version is sent to the author for checking. Grammatical corrections are shown in tracking but this is only for the author’s information: in grammatical questions, the copy-editor’s corrections shall prevail.
4. The author sends back the cleared text with all tracking removed.

IV. Layout editing

1. Layout editing takes place.
2. The editor sends the typeset text to the author for final checking. The purpose of this phase is to identify typesetting errors; at this stage it is not possible to modify content, but factual errors (e.g. mis-typed years) can be corrected.
3. The author sends the list of corrections to the editor who forwards them to the layout editor; later the editor checks that the corrections have been made.
4. The text is printed.