Peer review is the most important part of the scientific publication process. Peer review is basically the process of engaging experts to review the articles submitted for publication in journals, this is done in order to validate the research and to enhance the quality of the articles that are published in the journal.
The peer review process is actually a demarcating line that decides what a research is and what is merely a hypothesis. This process screens the articles for their originality or work, their relevance to the previously published work and does the work meet the required standard so as to be published as a research article. The bottom line to conduct a peer review is to eliminate the possibility that science is just another opinion.
Basic design of a peer review process:
1) The process begins with the submission of article to the journal
2) The first step begins as the editor of the journal checks if the article falls under the focus and scope of the journal. If the article does not fall under the focus and scope of the journal it is rejected with feedback and necessary changes to the author, if the article do fall under the focus and scope of the journal it is forwarded to the next step of review.
3) Here the reviewer checks for the originality, validity, significance, theory , evidence and other parameters based on the guidelines of the editors and yardsticks to measure the quality of the article.
4) Reviewer then make necessary comments and send the paper back to the editorial board, a reviewer may accept the paper as it is, reject or suggest changes in the manuscript, this information is conveyed to the authors
5) Editor of the journal then make final decision to publish the article based on the reviewers comments. And finalize the time frame for publishing the article.
6) Finally the accepted articles appear in the publication.
For further details on the publishing process and guidelines that an author and editor should follow, and to know more about the yardstick of the reviewers we would suggest you to go through the Author and Editors Guidelines.
