Reviewing procedures

Evaluation and review procedures

Manuscripts are accepted for review with the understanding that the same work has not been already published, that the submission has been approved by all of the authors and by the institution where the work was carried out and that all contributors are bylined in the article.

The Journal follows a double-blind review procedure, with each article subjected to two independent reviewers. The reviewers are chosen from external institutions and/or the extended PAM Editorial and Advisory Boards (in the latter case only one reviewer can be a member of the extended Board). An effort is made to select reviewers based on their research specialization. The reviewer evaluates the manuscript based on topic significance and relevance, originality of research, methodology, quality, and clarity of the presentation. Timeliness and scholarly integrity are valued traits of all reviewers for PAM. Conflicts of interest should be reported to the Editor in Chief.

Reviewers are asked to complete reviews within a 21-day period, either online or in an interactive pdf file returned by e-mail, or inform the Journal’s Secretary about difficulties with meeting the deadline. Reviewers are welcome to mark up the manuscript or write their comments in a separate file if they deem it necessary. If a reviewer does not feel competent to evaluate the paper, s/he is kindly requested to indicate an alternative reviewer.

Reviewers recommend to the editors whether to accept a paper substantially as is, with modifications, return for rewriting and another round of reviews, or to reject it altogether. Reviewers can call for another round of reviews, if there are major changes suggested. If two reviewers disagree fundamentally, a third reviewer is invited to evaluate the manuscript.

The average time for completing the review process is from 4 to 6 weeks.

The Authors receive feedback in the form of the anonoymous reviews and are expected to provide a revised version of the manuscript addressing the issues indicated.

The revised manuscript is subjected to editorial and language editing. The corrected manuscript with questions and suggestions from the Editors is sent back to the Authors for approval and discussion in two editing rounds.

The final decision regarding acceptance is always with the Editors.