Peer review process in the Progress in Physics of Applied Materials is based upon a single-blind peer-reviewing system, it means that Authors' identities are known to reviewers, but authors are unaware of the identity of reviewers. The existence of a submitted manuscript will not be disclosed to anyone other than reviewers and editors. All submissions to journal are first reviewed for completeness and then by editor-in-chief who decides whether they are suitable for peer review. The peer review usually involves review by at least three or more independent, expert peer reviewers. The Editor will consider the peer-reviewed reports when making a decision, but is not bound by the opinions or recommendations therein. A concern raised by a single peer reviewer or the editor-in-chief himself may result in the manuscript being rejected. Authors receive peer review reports with the editorial decision on their manuscript. The Journal decision-making process includes the following steps:
Registration and Submission
Registration in the Journal’s website by the corresponding author and providing the full affiliation of all authors.
Structural Assessment
The journal's expert inspects the article in regards to journal guidelines implementation and containing all the needed data and files. In this step, the manuscript may be returned to the authors to add the lacked material.
Editor-in-Chief Assessment and Processing
The editor-in-chief inspects the manuscript in regards to the journal scope, originality, and impact. Taking into consideration that this is the first quality assessment checkpoint, the article might be rejected, or adjustments might be suggested by the editor-in-chief at this step.
Check for Plagiarism
At this step, the manuscript is inspected for plagiarism, and depending on the similarity check software report by iThenticate, the manuscript is either progressed into the review phase or rejected due to similarities. The acceptable similarity percentage is less than 30%.
Reviewers Suggestion and Invitation
The editor in chief in this stage can directly send invitations to experts in the field. The editor in chief might also consult more specialized associated editors to nominate reviewers. The invitation procedure continues until two reviewers accept the invitation (the manuscript state is changed to under review). In some cases (advanced methods and a delicate case of studies), more reviewers might be invited.
First Decision after Review
Depending on reviewers evaluation report for the article (additional reviewer might be invited in case of conflict between reviewers’ reports), one of four decisions are to be made by the editorial board
Revision and Re-submission
After a proper revision, the author resubmits the manuscript along with complimentary data if needed. Furthermore, the author should provide a complete report of the new adjustments in light of the reviewer’s requests and answers for the editor-in-chief or reviewers’ questions. The author has the right to reject one or more of the revisions. However, he/she should provide an explanation for this rejection or suggest other adjustments.
Final Decision
After revisions, the final decision is to be made by the editor-in-chief. If the revision was satisfactory, the manuscript is accepted and sent for the publisher.
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