Peer Review

Peer review process
The peer-review procedure represents the analysis and critical assessment of scientific manuscripts by expert
reviewers who are not members in the editorial board of that journal.
The peer-review procedure aims to increase the scientific quality of published papers by:
- Selecting for publication only those papers which are worthy and relevant for the topic and research
directions of the journal;
- Rejecting the papers which are not appropriate in terms of quality or relevant for the journal’s profile;
- Increasing the individual quality of published articles, following their critical assessment by independent
specialists.
Peer-review stages
Preliminary stage
All papers received are assigned a number, which will be used throughout the procedure, so as to secure the
impartiality and the confidentially of the review procedure. In maximum seven days, the author will receive a
confirmation message, with information regarding the peer-review process and the assigned number.
During this stage, the editorial board verifies that the author sent an unpublished paper or a paper that is not
reviewed by another Romanian and foreign academic journal and checks if the paper respects the provisions
of the Romanian Law (206/2004) regarding the good conduct in scientific research.
Editorial Board Peer-Review
This stage refers to the evaluation of manuscripts by members of the editorial board, so as to identify and
select the papers which can be included in the scientific directions of our journal. This analysis is done on two
dimensions:
- content: the paper covers a topic included in the field of historical sciences, is an original paper, has a
substantial scientific content, has not major deficiencies of logical structure and scientific construction etc.
- form: the paper respects the journal house-style and has all other compulsory elements (keywords,
abstract).
Expert Peer-Review
The expert peer-review is done by two readers, members of the Romanian and international scientific
community, experts in the restricted area in which that paper is included. The readers are selected from
among the collaborators who agreed to participate in the peer-review process. The review is done by means
of a standard peer-review form, which the experts receive together with the reviewed paper. These experts
assess the paper, in a mutually agreed period of time, taking into account the following criteria:
- its scientific quality (scientific basis, level of originality etc.)
- its relevance and impact (relevance and originality of sources, clarity and accuracy of argumentation,
expected impact).
The readers will not be involved in the peer-review process if they cannot evaluate the manuscript in
the given time or if they acknowledge, from the text of the reviewed paper, any kind of incompatibility with the
person / persons whom they think is the author of the assessed paper.
The Expert Peer-Review is completed with the readers making specific remarks related to the form and
content of the reviewed paper and by giving one of the following three grades:
- accepted for publication without any changes;
- accepted for publication, pending specific changes;
- rejected.
If there are major differences between the grades of the two reviewers, the editorial board will employ a third
expert. The author will be presented these experts’ recommendations, preserving the full confidentiality
between the author (authors) of the paper and its reviewers.
After the author resubmits his / her paper, it will be forwarded to the same reviewers, who assess the
opportunity of publishing the paper. The final decision regarding the publication of a specific paper belongs to
the Editorial Board.