Peer Review Process

Peer Review Process

The peer review of the articles received in Seminars in Medical Writing and Education is a crucial task for the selection of articles that meet the required standards of quality and impact in the scientific and professional community targeted by this publication.

This essential task, in a rigorous peer review process, falls on external reviewers, recognized experts in their field, unrelated to each other and unaware of the authorship of the work to be evaluated, through a double-blind peer review system.

The external reviewer's task is to collaborate with the Editorial Committee in verifying the originality and quality of the manuscript, its relevance in the areas of interest of the journal, and compliance with the necessary formal requirements for its publication. For this, the reviewer's task will focus on the rigorous analysis of the content and form of the manuscript, with a critical and constructive attitude.

The reviewers of Seminars in Medical Writing and Education make up a constantly expanding international list of specialists with a doctoral degree or persons of recognized prestige in the fields of research, giving priority to authors who have published in journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus.

The documents submitted for evaluation are confidential information, so reviewers must refrain from divulging them in any way, or using the information contained in the text for their benefit or that of third parties. If it is necessary to contrast data or advice from specialists on the subject, the authors will be informed.

 

Steps and times of the review process:

1. The article will be received by the journal, which will send you a receipt by email with a unique reference number.

2. The Editor-in-Chief or assigned Editor initially considers newly submitted articles.

3. Within 72 hours, you will receive an email if the manuscript is rejected at this stage. Manuscripts could be rejected at this stage if they do not fit the scope of the journal, if they are incomplete, if the findings are not sufficiently described, or if the content is plagiarized.

4. The remaining articles are sent for a double-blind peer review. You will receive an initial decision on the manuscript in an average of 30-45 days.

5. If a revision is required, all comments from the editor and reviewers will be sent to the author along with the original version of the manuscript. You should send the revised version along with your response to the editorial office within 15 days.

6. If accepted, your article will be published online approximately 15 days after acceptance. All accepted articles will be published online and will be citable by the digital object identifier (DOI). The editorial team will take care of sending the published articles to the indexed databases or registering them as necessary.

 

Stages and times of the review process:

The interaction between the evaluators and the editorial team is carried out through the journal's web portal, in order to maintain a digital record of all the events that occurred during the process (traceability).

Once the reviewers receive the editorial invitation in their email, they will have a maximum period of 7 days to accept or decline the review proposal. This proposal includes the title and abstract of the text, as well as the schedule established for the review. Only in case the proposal is accepted, the link to the full text of the work to be evaluated will be enabled, along with the corresponding review form.

The reviewers should issue their report and recommendations within a period of 4 weeks (28 days) from the date of acceptance. As an alternative to sending the report, the reviewers can add their own document with the notes or comments they deem pertinent. The recommendation that the reviewer finally decides should be in accordance with the observations he has written in his qualitative evaluation and/or, if applicable, with the numerical score awarded.

In case of a significant discrepancy between the recommendations of the two reviewers, a third opinion (third reviewer) will be requested.

If, based on the recommendations of both reviewers, the editorial decision were to subject the article to a second round of peer review, this would be carried out by the same people who conducted the first evaluation.