Peer review process
All submitted manuscripts relevant to the journal’s profile are reviewed.
All referees are eminent external experts in relevant fields, with papers published in these fields in the last three years. The reviewers must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.
Editorial Board applies the iThenticate (CrossRef and CrossCheck) service for verifying the originality of submitted papers and for preventing duplicate publishing and plagiarism.
Journal applies a „double blind peer review process“ for papers. Authors and reviewers are anonymous to each other in the process of review. Reviews after the article has been published are allowed and encouraged for subsequent evaluation of papers and authors.
The Editorial Office encourages Journal’s contributors and readers alike to analyse and assess the published articles and send their analyses and assessments to the Editorial Office.
A peer reviewer assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process. During the review process Editor may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
Papers classified as scientific must have at least two positive reviews. Throughout the process, all of the reviewers of a paper act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor may assign additional reviewers.
A usual reviewing period is 30 days.
Having finished the review, the referee makes one of the following decisions:
- Publish without any changes,
- Publish with suggested changes,
- Change and resubmit for a review,
- Refuse the manuscript.
The Editorial Board then informs the author about the content of the review and suggests following the referee’s decision.
The Editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviewers or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.
The detailed instructions on following the referee’s decision are available on the web page Instructions for ASSISTANT.
Reviews are processed electronically through the ASSISTANT system for journal online editing and publishing. ASSISTANT supports all activities of editorial management, from a creation of a journal page, over article submission, monitoring of the reviewing process, documentation administration, and maintenance of recordkeeping, to making final decisions and publishing volumes on the journal’s own web page.
The Editorial Office has an obligation to send to the author a copy of the review or an explained refusal to publish a manuscript. Copies of reviews are also sent to the Ministry of the Education of the Republic of Serbia as well as to the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation at a request of the Ministry submitted to the Editorial Office.
All reviews are kept in the archives and in the ASSISTANT system for journal electronic editing and publishing, permanently.
The Editorial Team of the Military Technical Courier encourages the reviewers to verify their reviews in their personal profile on the Web of Science platform, according to the instructions on the page Registration in Web of Science.
When reviewers submit their peer reviews to The Military Technical Courier, they will be asked whether they would like to track, verify and showcase them on the WoS platform. Reviewers can further use their verified peer reviews as evidence of their contribution to the scientific community in applications for promotion, grants, etc.
The reviewing policy of the Journal:
- allows public display of the review (only after the article has been published),
- allows reviewers to display the title of the reviewed article (only after the article has been published).
The list of Military Technical Courier referees is available on the web page List of referees.
The details on the publication ethics in the article creation and submission as well as the journal editing and publishing are available on the web page Publication ethics and malpractice statement.
The percentage of papers rejected due to a negative peer review is 65 % for the last twelve months.
