Double-blind Peer Review
This Policy of Double Blind Peer Review is applicable to all publications submitted to the Developmental Medico-Life-Sciences Journal and operates a double-blind peer review process. All the submitted manuscripts undergo an initial evaluation (1-2 days) which includes assessment of the scope of the article along with its originality. The Editorial Board of the Journal is responsible for the selection of reviewers based on their expertise in the relevant field. The manuscript is sent to two external reviewers (from outside the organization of journal) for a peer review. The experts/reviewers in the field are given a time of 1 week to make decisions accordingly. In case of major/minor revisions, the manuscript is returned to authors for further amendments and its resubmission in a period of 3 days (The duration is further extended on special requests by authors). The revised manuscript is then again reviewed by the reviewers with a final decision of the editor to get it accepted or rejected which takes up to 2 days. The manuscript upon acceptance is preceded for final copy editing, English editing, proof reading with the confirmation of article processing charges meanwhile. The final version of the manuscript is published within 3 days after the acceptance. The entire publication process completes in a range of 15-20 days. In case of conflict of interest regarding a specific manuscript, a member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review. Reviewers will be treated anonymously and the pre-publication history of each article will not be made available online. Intentionally falsifying information, for example, authors or reviewers with a false name or email address, will result in rejection of the manuscript and may lead to penalty according to misconduct policy. Guest editorial submitted by authors is reviewed internally by Editor-in-Chief or Editor and is then sent externally to another guest editor for final verdict.
Requirements for double-blind peer review
Developmental Medico-Life-Sciences offers double-blind peer review; authors who choose this option will remain anonymous to the reviewers throughout the peer review process.
If you want to participate in double-blind peer review, you should:
- Prepare your manuscript in a way that conceals the identities of all the authors, by following the double-blind peer review guidelines,
- Tick the appropriate box in our manuscript tracking system – eJP – during submission,
- When completing the Editorial Policy Checklist form, where applicable, put ‘DBPR’ and your manuscript number in any sections that require author names.
Please note that authors are responsible for ensuring that the paper is properly anonymized; this will not be checked by your editor.
Double-blind Peer Review guidelines:
When preparing a manuscript for double-anonymized peer review, check these common places where manuscripts and submission files may reveal an author’s identity.
→ Do not include names or affiliations anywhere in the manuscript or Supplementary Information.
→ When referring to your own work in the manuscript, use neutral terminology. Replace phrases like “as we have shown before” with “as has been shown before” or similar.
→ Remove any author names from the figures.
→ Include acknowledgements, author information/contributions, and author name order in the cover letter, not in the manuscript. This information can be transferred after the completion of the peer review process.
→ Remove any author information from all submitted files’ metadata. This information is often added automatically from the identity information on your computer, and can be found in “properties” under the “file” menu in word processors and PDF readers.
→ Include your complete competing interests declaration in your cover letter and NOT in the submission system. Instead, in the submission system, provide a minimal statement (either “The authors declare the existence of a financial/non-financial competing interest” OR “The authors declare no competing interests”), which will be shown to reviewers. For published manuscripts, reviewers will be provided the full competing interests declaration at the time of acceptance.
→ Do not add names to any document included with your submission, including the Developmental Medico-Life-Sciences editorial policy checklist or reporting summary. Replace with “DBPR” and your manuscript number, if known
Reviewer guidelines:
Submitted manuscripts are reviewed for originality, significance, adequacy of documentation, reader interest and composition. Manuscript not submitted according to instructions will be returned to the author for correction prior to beginning the peer review/process. Revised manuscripts are judged on the adequacy of responses to suggestions and criticisms made during the initial review. Each manuscript will be check for technical, epidemiological, statistical, and ethical and language corrections. All parts of accepted manuscripts are subject to editing for scientific accuracy and clarity by the office of the Editor. The editorial board of DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICO-LIFE-SCIENCES holds the right to a final decision of accepting or rejecting any article from publication in the journal, at all stages including the editorial review.A brief account of minimum requirements by "International Committee of Medical Journal Editors" is given in "ICMJE-Recommendations" link below for assisting the reviewers. However, the full text can be read at www.icmje.org
Check List for Reviewing an article:
- Please go through the article and comment according to the following guidelines.
- The manuscript being sent for review is a confidential document; hence its contents should not be disclosed, used in any way or discussed with the authors.
- The final decision to accept or reject the manuscript rests with journal Editorial Committee.
- In case a manuscript is rejected, the reviewers are expected to give detailed reasons. If a write-up can be improved, please give detailed recommendations which would help the authors.
- The main idea of your comments is to help the authors to improve upon this manuscript and in the long run, their skill to write future research articles, so please use an encouraging and kind language.
- (Please type ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in the selected column)
Download review form from here
