Blind peer review process
All submitted manuscripts are first subjected to the journal's criteria check-list and then to a preliminary evaluation by a member of the Editorial Committee. Articles approved for the Thematic Forum are forwarded to two (2) evaluators from the Editorial Board or ad hoc evaluators for blind peer review process (Double Blind Review), with the criteria being that they are experienced researchers in the field and also have strong academic output.
To ensure the integrity of blind peer review for submissions to the journal, all possible care must be taken not to reveal the identity of authors and reviewers among themselves during the process. This requires that authors, editors and evaluators (who may submit documents to the system as part of the evaluation process) take some precautions with the text and document properties:
- The authors of the document must have excluded any names that identify them from the text.
- In Microsoft Office documents, the author identification must be removed from the document properties (in File > Properties menu), starting from File, in the main menu, and clicking in the sequence: File > Save as... > Tools ( or Options on Mac) > Security Options... > Remove personal information from file on save > OK > Save.
- In PDFs, author's names must also be removed from the Document Properties under File in the Adobe Acrobat main menu.
For texts submitted to other Sections (Reviews, Interviews, and Free Section), in addition to the preliminary evaluation and the Editorial Board's evaluation, if approved, they are also forwarded to two (2) reviewers. All precautions to ensure the integrity of the blind peer review must be followed, as specified above.
