Rules for checking the manuscripts

Rules for checking the manuscripts of research papers before submitting them for peer-review to the quarterly Practical Oncology journal

Before submitting for review:

In order to ensure objective and impartial expert evaluation of the materials, all articles received by the Editorial Board are subjected to double blind review where the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are hidden from each other.

1. When sending articles to the Editorial Board, the author must make sure that the manuscript is prepared for peer-review in compliance with the rules of the Editorial Board and that the reviewer will not be able to identify the author by direct or indirect data contained in the manuscript.

2. Full information about all authors, their addresses, contact details, and place of work are indicated on the title page, which should be provided to the Editorial Board in a separate file. The title page is not submitted for review, but is kept by the Editorial Board until the end of the review procedure.

3. Information about a possible conflict of interest or acknowledgments is also not sent for review and should be submitted separately from the main text of the manuscript.

4. When preparing the manuscript of the article, which will be submitted for review, the author should make sure that any identifying information of the authors is removed from the text. The main text of the manuscript should not contain information about the names of the authors or their affiliation.

5. If the author needs to give a reference to his / her own work in the manuscript, such reference can be made only as a work of a third party without reference to his / her own authorship of the submitted article.

6. Any illustrations, pictures, tables or charts should not contain references to the authors of the submitted manuscript.

7. When choosing the title of the file for the manuscript, it is necessary to specify the title of the article (or part of it) without specifying the name or surname of the authors.

8. The properties of the file containing the manuscript must be anonymous. You must verify that the information about the author is not loaded as information about the creator of the file.

9. The author should not make efforts to find out possible reviewers of his / her article.

10. If the above requirements are met, the manuscript is submitted to the reviewer. The review period is set within ten working days, after which the author is notified of the results.

REVIEW PROCEDURE

Rules for peer review of research content

1. All articles received by the Editorial Board are subjected to independent double blind review by two reviewers for expert evaluation. All reviewers are acknowledged experts on the subject of peer-reviewed materials and published works related to the topic of the article in 3 recent years.

2. The reviews should provide answers to the questions formulated on the basis of the Guidelines of the Сommittee on Publication Ethics and Elsevier Publishing Company (see ‘Preparation and Publication of a Scientific Journal. International Practice of the Ethics of Editing, Peer Review, Publication and Authorship of Scientific Publications by the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE and Elsevier Publishing Company. Collection of Translations’. Moscow, 2013, 140 p. at: http://shkola.neicon.ru/recommendations?start=20):

А. Ethics of the publication:

– are there any suspicions that the article is a substantial copy of another work?

– is there any suspicion that the article contains false results?

– was there a violation of confidentiality of medical research?

– were the standards of ethical treatment of animals and people followed?

B. Uniqueness of the publication:

– is the article original enough and interesting for publication?

– is the work making some contribution to an area of knowledge?

– does the article meet the journal’s standards?

– is the research question important?

C. Structure of the publication:

– does the ‘Title’ describe the content of the article clearly?

– does the abstract reflect the article content?

– does the ‘Introduction’ describe exactly what the author was hoping to achieve and is the researched problem clearly indicated?

– do the illustrations and tables inform the reader and are they part of the story?

– are the captions to the pictures accurate?

– are the pictures uniform in style?

– does the author explain exactly how the data was collected in the ‘Materials and Methods’?

– is a plan suitable for the answers to the questions formulated?

– is there information provided in order to reproduce the research?

– does the article indicate the followed procedures and are they arranged in the order of importance?

– are the research methods explained in detail if they are new?

– are the equipment and materials properly described?

– does the article explain what type of data was stored? Is (are) the author(s) accurate in

their description of measurements? Does the article explain what kind of discoveries have been achieved in the research? Are they clearly grouped and do they constitute a logical sequence?

– are the results properly analysed?

– are the statistics correct?

– are the statements in the ‘Discussion’ section supported by specific results? Do these

statements sound reasonable?

– do the authors mention how the results correlate with their expectations and the results of earlier research?

– does the article support or refute the previous theories?

– is it explained how the research affected the progress of scientific knowledge?

– if the article is based on previous research, are the bibliographic references to this

research properly written?

– have the authors missed any important work published in the past?

– are the bibliographic descriptions of references to publications accurate?

D. Language of publication:

– does the article contain any grammar errors?

– is the English part of the article well translated? Is it difficult to understand the scientific content of the article?

E. Conclusion:

– can the article be recommended for publication or should it not be published? Does the article need corrections and a second peer-review?

– should the article include comments of the reviewer or the editorial board?

3. Original articles are kept by the Editorial Board and can be sent to the expert councils of VAK (Higher Attestation Commission) if requested.

4. The Editorial Board undertakes to send copies of reviews to the Russian Federation Ministry of Education and Science if the Editorial Board receives such a request.

5. If the review indicates the need to correct the article, it is sent to the author for improvement. In this case, the date of receipt of the article by the Editorial Board is the date of the return of the modified article.

6. An article sent to the author for improvement must be returned in the revised form as soon as possible. The revised manuscript should be accompanied with a letter from the authors, which contains the answers to all comments and explains all the changes made in article.

7. If necessary, the improved article is peer-reviewed again.

8. An article requiring revision after review is withdrawn from consideration if the authors have not sent it again within more than two months.

9. In case of disagreement with the opinion of the reviewer, the authors of the article are entitled to give a reasoned response to the Editorial Board. By decision of the Editorial Board, the article may be re-directed to another specialist for a review.

10. To be published in the journal, an article needs a positive review of experts; moreover, the date of receipt of the article by the Editorial Board is taken into account, according to these ‘Instructions for Authors’, published on the website of Practical Oncology (www.practicaloncology.ru)