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
