Peer Review Guidelines
1. General guidelines
1.1. The Editorial Board considers only manuscripts submitted to the Journal’s official e-mail address at museology.journal@spbu.ru
1.2. All submissions are subject to mandatory initial screening, internal peer review (carried out by members of the Editorial Board) and external double blind peer review.
1.3. The decision about acceptance or rejection of manuscript is made within ninety days from the date of its submission to the Journal’s e-mail and is disclosed to the author thereupon.
1.4. The manuscript might be rejected by the Journal’s Chief Editor:
1.4.1. if the author is unavailable for more than thirty days;
1.4.2. upon the results of internal peer review;
1.4.3. upon consideration of external peer review and the author’s response to the referees.
Positive referees’ reports do not guarantee acceptance of the manuscript.
1.5. The referees’ reports are filed and kept by the Journal and the Publishing House for a period of five years from the date of publication of the manuscript or the date of the Journal’s decision to reject manuscript. The Journal shall send copies of the referees’ reports to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation upon the request therefor.
1.6. The referees’ reports of accepted and rejected submissions will be sent to the Saint-Petersburg University Publishing House along with the materials of the respective Journal’s issue. In case the referees’ reports are not provided or are incomplete, editing and publishing of the Journal’s issue shall not be carried out.
2. Registration and initial screening
2.1. Registration and initial screening of manuscript shall be carried out within up to ten days from the date of submission.
2.2. The Board Secretary will register manuscript submitted to the Journal’s e-mail, specifying the date of its submission.
2.3. The Board Secretary will screen submitted manuscript for its compliance with the Manuscript Submission Guidelines, making sure that length and structure of the manuscript is appropriate; the list of references, keywords and abstracts in English and Russian are provided; the formatting of the manuscript fits the requirements; the author’s details and contact information are included, etc.
2.4. If a manuscript fails to comply with the Manuscript Submission Guidelines, it will be returned to the author for revision.
2.5. Once the manuscript has been registered and screened, the Board Secretary will delete the author’s details from the file of submission and forward it to the member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field, for internal peer review.
3. Internal peer review
3.1. The internal peer review of the manuscript compliant with the Journal’s formatting guidelines shall be carried out within up to twenty days from the date of its submission.
3.2. The internal peer review is carried out by the member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field.
3.3. The member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field provides feedback on the manuscript by filling out the Internal Peer Review Form (Appendix 1), which requires the referee:
3.3.1. to outline the extent to which the manuscript meets the general standards of academic quality;
3.3.2. to indicate if the manuscript contains any evidence of plagiarism, citation manipulation and other forms of academic misconduct;
3.3.3. to recommend either to accept the manuscript for publication or to reject it;
3.3.4. to suggest a list of potential peer reviewers, specifying their titles, affiliations and contact information.
3.4. After completing the internal peer review, the member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field will forward the Internal Peer Review Form to the Board Secretary.
3.5. In case the member of the Editorial Board responsible for the relevant subject field recommends rejecting manuscript, the Chief Editor will decide to reject the submission and informs the author thereupon.
3.6. The Board Secretary will forward a manuscript accepted in the internal peer review to the specified external peer reviewers.
4. External peer review
4.1. The external peer review shall take no more than fifty days from the date of submission of the Internal Peer Review Form.
4.2. All manuscripts cleared by the initial screening and internal peer review are subject to impartial external double blind peer review by no less than two referees, whose area of expertise is as close as possible to the subject of the submitted manuscript.
4.3. The external peer reviewers might be selected among acknowledged experts, who have a doctoral degree and publications issued over the last three years on the subject field relevant to the manuscript’s topic.
4.4. The requirement for selecting a peer reviewer shall be the lack of conflicting interests of the referee and the author of the manuscript. Manuscript cannot be peer reviewed by:
4.4.1. staff members of the author’s academic institution;
4.4.2. the author’s former students or academic advisors;
4.4.3. the author’s former co-authors;
4.4.4. the contributors to the research projects, in which the author participated.
4.5. In case any conflict of interest is discovered, peer reviewer should inform the Journal and decline to review the manuscript.
4.6. Peer reviewing is double blind, which means that the author’s identity is not revealed to the reviewer and vice versa.
4.7. The peer reviewer provides his/her feedback by completing the standard form (see Peer review form), which contains the questions requiring grounded and well-reasoned replies and provides the guidelines of academic peer reviewing, conditions of confidentiality, etc.
4.8. Upon reviewing manuscript, the referee should provide detailed and substantiated responses to the following questions:
— Indicate any conflict of interest you have in relation to the review of this document (indicate “no” if not applicable).
— What is the main focus of the article?
— What is your general impression of the strengths and weaknesses of the article?
— How relevant and important is the topic?
— Does the abstract contain a proper summary of the manuscript?
— Is the purpose of the manuscript clear?
— Are basic terms used correctly? Is the literature review up to date?
— Are the conclusions logical?
— Does the conclusion provide significant information for the development of museology?
— Is text editing necessary to improve the style, clarity, or readability of the manuscript?
4.9. Based on the results of the manuscript evaluation, the peer reviewer will recommend one of the following options:
— to accept the manuscript for publication in its original form (without any revisions);
— accept in publication, subject to minor revision of the manuscript;
— accept for publication, subject to substantial revision of the manuscript;
— to reject the manuscript.
4.10. The peer reviewer should complete the peer review, print it out, sign it, certify it by seal (or print the form on the letterhead of the referee’s institution), and send it to the Board Secretary.
4.11. By decision of the Chief Editor, the manuscript may be sent for additional revision, including the cases of resubmission of the revised manuscript.
4.12. Basing upon the recommendations of the peer review, the Board Secretary will forward extracts from reviews, the consolidated list of referees’ criticisms and suggestions, and will recommend the author consider these corrections while revising the manuscript.
4.13. The author should revise the manuscript according to the referees’ comments and/or provide a detailed response to the referees. The author should print out and sign his/her report and forward it to the Board Secretary.
4.14. Material submitted for publication can be improved not more than two times. If the author forwards the revised manuscript more thirty days from the date of submission of referees’ reports, the manuscript shall be regarded as submitted anew.
5. Decision to accept for publication or reject
5.1. In deciding whether to accept or reject a manuscript, the Chief Editor will consider the revised text of the manuscript, peer reviewers’ reports, and the author’s responses.
5.2. Within ten days, the Board Secretary shall inform the author of the Chief Editor’s decision to accept the manuscript or send him/her substantiated rejection letter.
6. Retraction procedure
6.1. After the appeal of the author or other person who provided facts of the violation of scientific ethics in the article, the editorial board of the journal appoints a commission that conducts case investigations, taking into account all available facts and possibilities for checking the ethics of publication.
6.2. Deciding to withdraw the article, the editorial board indicates in the minutes of the meeting the reason for the retraction (in case of detection of plagiarism — with reference to sources of borrowing), as well as the date of retraction.
6.3. The Council for the Ethics of Scientific Publications (to enter information into a single database of retracted articles) provides a protocol that indicates the date of the meeting, the composition of the meeting, the results of the examination, an informed decision and a completed form:
— The author's name and title of the article;
— The title of the publication from which the text is withdrawn;
— The initiator of the article's review;
— Grounds for revoking the article and the date of the decision;
— A link to the page on the website of the publication, on which information about the retraction is given;
— Output data to become a DOI (if any);
— Subject (social sciences, agriculture, etc.).
6.4. Information on the revoked texts is transferred to the scientific information base — NEB, CyberLenin. Upon receipt of the application for retraction, information on the article and the full text remain on elibrary.ru and in CyberLenin, but is supplemented with information on retraction. The withdrawn articles and references from them are excluded from the RSCI and do not participate in the calculation of the indicators.
6.5. In case of serious moral damage to the parties to a conflict of interest, information on the fact of violation of scientific ethics can be transferred to the author's place of work.
6.6. The editorial board reserves the right to decide independently on further cooperation with the authors of the retracted articles (complete refusal of cooperation, refusal to cooperate for a certain period of time, appointment of additional expert examination of articles in case of repeated cooperation).
