PEER REVIEW PROCESS

Peer Review Process

"Political Preferences" publishes only previously unpublished articles based on empirical research. All of the journal's content is peer-reviewed. The journal adopts a double-blind peer review policy, which requires that papers should be anonymized before electronic submission. The papers' processing, including the stage when they are sent to reviewers, is fully anonymous until their publication. Each accepted manuscript is reviewed by at least two reviewers affiliated with a different academic institution than the author's origin. The review form is available HERE.

Stages of Peer review process
1) After the corresponding author submits the paper via the journal platform, it is checked by the editorial team secretary against the journal's Author Guidelines.
2) Then, the Editor-in-Chief or another member of the Editorial team appointed by him checks the submitting paper with regard to the journal's scope. The papers may be rejected at this stage without being peer-reviewed by external reviewers if they do not match the journal's scope.
3) If the paper is accepted in the prereview procedure, the journal secretary sends invitations to experts in the given field to assign two external reviewers. When declining, the journal secretary looks for alternative reviewers. At least one of the reviewers is affiliated with a foreign institution other than the author's nationality.
4) The reviewers, via online review form, submit their opinions to the journal with a recommendation. The reviewers can recommend: accepting the paper without revisions, making revisions (flagged as either major or minor), or rejecting the paper.
5) The Editor-in-Chief considers the reviews before making the final decision. If the reviewers' conclusions are unequivocal, the Editor-in-Chief may decide to send the paper to another reviewer.
6) The Editor-in-Chief makes a final decision whether to publish the paper in a forthcoming issue or reject it.
7) The journal secretary informs the author about the overall decision and forwards the relevant reviewer comments with a clear statement, whether the manuscript has been: accepted for publication; accepted but requires some improvements; rejected. The authors who accepted the remarks are obliged to include the suggested and agreed improvements and upload the text's corrected version within a month.