The authors should prepare the manuscript in accordance with the Authors’ Guidelines. Failure to completely adhere to the guidelines may delay the review process and occasionally lead to rejecting the submission. When the authors submit a paper for publication, the manuscript will first be assessed for meeting minimum criteria by the editor. Rejecting the manuscript at this stage may be the result of major scientific faults, very poor writing levels or unsuitability of the paper’s topic for the Journal’s scope of publication. Authors of manuscripts rejected at this stage will be advised of the decision within three weeks of manuscript receipt.

When the submission passes the editor’s initial assessment, the editor will pass on the paper to a minimum of two reviewers who are expert in the field of the submitted work. The journal adopts double blinding for reviewing.

The authors may suggest potential reviewers for their submitted manuscript. The authors have the right to exclude certain individuals at the time of submission. Suggested reviewers should not be connected to the submitted work by any means. There is no guarantee that the suggested reviewers will be necessarily the ones reviewing the work.

The review process takes an average of 2-3 weeks but could take up to 3 months depending on the speed of recruiting reviewers and their correspondence. Once the review panel send back their review outcomes and comments, the corresponding author are contacted for reviewing their work in accordance with the report and comments of the reviewers. The review process may need to be done more than once until the reviewers and / or the editor are satisfied with the quality of the final review based on meeting and passing a set of structured criteria. Should the decisions of the reviewers contradict one another, the editor may send the paper for an additional review before a final decision is made. Should the paper pass the review process, the editor will contact the corresponding author to advise of the paper acceptance.

The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor's decision is final. Editors are not involved in decisions about papers which they have written themselves or have been written by family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in which the editor has an interest.

Double anonymized review

This journal uses double anonymised review, which means the identities of the authors are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa. To facilitate this, please include the following separately:

Title page (with author details): This should include the title, authors' names, affiliations, acknowledgements and any Declaration of Interest statement, and a complete address for the corresponding author including an e-mail address.

Anonymized manuscript (no author details): The main body of the paper (including the references, figures, tables and any acknowledgements) should not include any identifying information, such as the authors' names or affiliations.

After acceptance

Proofs: One set of page proofs (as PDF files) will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author or, a link will be provided in the e-mail so that authors can download the files themselves. The PDF proofs can be annotated. To speed the publication process return of the proofs is expected within 48 hours.