Each submitted article that meets the basic criteria regarding topic and scientific quality is double-blind evaluated by two external reviewers. The primary aim of the evaluation is to help authors to improve the quality of their manuscript and not to reject submissions, raise rejection percentages or discourage authors. Before evaluation, manuscripts are checked for plagiarism.
At submission, the authors are invited to suggest two reviewers. Typically, the editorial team accepts one of the two, but it reserves the right not to contact the suggested persons. The authors may also exclude persons with due justification. The editorial team never invites reviewers who have been excluded by the authors.
The reviewers have up to 42 days to write their evaluations in English, French, Italian or Spanish in a predefined form. In addition, each article is evaluated by at least one member of the editorial team. The external and internal evaluations are neither signed nor published with the articles.
The editorial team's decision to accept or reject an article is based on the external and internal evaluations. If the three evaluations do not allow for a decision, an additional external evaluation will be commissioned. The decision is one of the following: accept submission, minor revisions required, major revisions required, submit to another journal, reject submission. An article is accepted only after the revisions have been checked by the editorial team and, if necessary, by the external reviewers. After being informed about the acceptation of the article, the authors prepare the final text according to the instructions of the journal's style sheet.