With regard to the manuscripts sent by the authors for publication in the "Acta Poloniae Pharmaceutica", the publisher and the cooperating editors follow the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), subjecting the manuscripts sent by the authors to an independent scientific review.
Each manuscript is reviewed by two external independent reviewers. All referee's reports are based on the so-called single-blind review process, where reviewers know the identity of authors, but authors don’t know the identity of reviewers. The author may indicate at least two reviewers, which, however, does not mean their automatic selection. Only suggested reviewers who have an academic and/or institutional e-mail address will be considered. E-mail addresses with generic domain names (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, AOL, etc.) will be disregarded.
The names of the reviewers of the publication are not disclosed, and the manuscript is qualified for printing after obtaining two positive reviews. The list of reviewers is published on the journal's website once a year.
The review process
After receiving the manuscript, the editorial team reads it and, if necessary, consults thematic consultants, and then decides to:
- rejecting the manuscript without a review;
- returning to the authors in order to fill in the identified formal deficiencies;
- subjecting it to an external review.
If the manuscript is rejected without a review, the editors remove all received materials, both in printed and electronic form, that could have been produced in the publishing house as part of this assessment stage.
In the event of a request to the authors to fill in the deficiencies found in the study, the editor-in-chief agrees with the authors on the date when these supplements may be provided. If the revised study is not forwarded to the editor-in-chief by the deadline, he may depart from its further assessment. In the case of a preliminary positive assessment of the manuscript, it is directed to an external scientific review, carried out – as a rule – by two independent experts in the field.
The editor-in-chief expects the reviewers to prepare an exhaustive review and to formulate an unambiguous recommendation regarding the evaluated manuscript, qualifying them for:
- rejections, or
- acceptance for publication, or
- indications of amendments whose acceptance is a condition of acceptance of the manuscript.
Depending on the type of recommendations indicated in the two reviews received, the editor-in-chief:
- rejects the manuscript in case of two negative reviews;
- agrees with the authors to introduce corrections indicated by the reviewers;
- appoints a third reviewer in the event of divergent recommendations of the first two reviewers, consults the conclusions of a negative review with the authors, makes the final decision regarding the manuscript, depending on the result of the third review;
- includes the manuscript in the publishing plan in case of two positive reviews.
The names of the reviewers, after obtaining their consent, may be disclosed at the time of publication, and the resulting reviews are stored in the internal editorial documentation. The Editorial Board, when cooperating with authors, recommends that they follow good practices in the development of manuscripts, which include, inter alia, avoiding plagiarism, autoplagiarism, ghostwriting or using material owned by third parties in the manuscript without proper authorization. The authors sign documents (statements / contracts) that contain relevant clauses excluding such practices.