Refereeing policy for MACS:
All articles submitted to MACS undergo a single-blind peer review process.
All manuscripts submitted as research papers for publication in MACS will be sent to the three referees in the field, except for high-quality conference papers invited for the journal submission that in this case, only one reviewer's report is necessary. If a research paper is rejected by one of the initial reviewers, it will be sent to the fourth referee; in order for an article to be published in the journal, at least three of the referees must approve it. If a submission presents a severe case of plagiarism and includes a strong match and similarity with other published articles, the editor has made the decision to reject the submission based on his own review or only one reviewer's report. The Journal decision-making process includes the following steps:
Registration and Submission
Registration in the Journal’s website by the corresponding author and providing the full affiliation of all authors. Hereinafter, the paper with the proper format, as requested by the journal, can be submitted to the journal.
Structural Assessment
The journal director inspects the article in regards to journal guidelines implementation and containing all the needed data and files. In this step, the manuscript might be un-submitted and returned to authors to add the lacked material or to imply adjustment following journal guidelines.
Editor-in-Chief Assessment and Processing
The Editor-in-Chief inspects the manuscript in regards to the journal scope, originality, and impact. Taking into consideration that this is the first quality assessment checkpoint, the article might be rejected, or adjustments might be suggested by the editor at this step.
Check for Plagiarism
At this step, the manuscript is inspected for plagiarism, and depending on the similarity check software report by iThenticate, the manuscript is either progressed into the review phase or rejected due to similarities. The acceptable similarity percentage is less than 20%.
Reviewers Suggestion and Invitation
The editor in chief in this stage can directly send invitations to experts in the field. The editor in chief might also consult more specialized associated editors to nominate reviewers. The invitation procedure continues until two reviewers accept the invitation (the manuscript state is changed to under review). In some cases (advanced methods and a delicate case of studies), more reviewers might be invited.
First Decision after Review
Depending on reviewers evaluation report for the article (additional reviewer might be invited in case of conflict between reviewers’ reports), one of four decisions are to be made by the journal board
Revision and Re-submission
After a proper revision, the author resubmits the manuscript along with complimentary data if needed. Furthermore, the author should provide a complete report of the new adjustments in light of the reviewer’s requests and answers for the editor or reviewers’ questions. The author has the right to reject one or more of the revisions. However, he/she should provide an explanation for this rejection or suggest other adjustments.
Final Decision
After revisions, the final decision is to be made by the journal board. If the revision was satisfactory, the manuscript is accepted and sent for the publisher.
.jpg)