Reviewing Process

Reviewing process

All submitted manuscripts received by the Editorial Office will be checked to see whether it is properly prepared and whether the manuscript follows the ethical policies of the journal. Manuscripts that do not fit the journal's ethical policy will be rejected before peer-review. Manuscripts that are not properly prepared will be returned to the authors for revision and resubmission. After these checks, the Editor-in-Chief or an Associate Editor-in-Chief (or an Editorial Board member in case of a conflict of interest) will determine whether the manuscript fits the scope of the journal and whether it is scientifically sound. No judgment on the significance or potential impact of the work will be made at this stage. Reject decisions at this stage will be verified by the Editor-in-Chief.

 

Peer-Review

Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to at least three independent experts for peer review. System Theory, Control, and Computing Journal uses a single-blind peer review process, where the author's identity is known to the reviewers. Peer review comments to the editor are confidential and will only be disclosed with the express agreement of the reviewer. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor's decision is final. For every submission to the journal, assistant editors will invite experts. These experts may also include Editorial Board members of the journal. Potential reviewers suggested by the authors may also be considered. Reviewers should not have published with any of the co-authors during the past five years and should not currently work on one of the institutes of the co-authors of the submitted manuscript.

 

Editorial Decision and Revision

All articles published in the System Theory, Control, and Computing Journal go through peer review and receive at least three reviews. The editor will communicate the decision, which will be one of the following:

Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given at most seven days for minor revisions.

Reconsider after Major Revisions: The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. Usually, only one round of major revisions is allowed. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within at most fifteen days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.

Reject and Encourage Resubmission: An article where additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions will be rejected and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further experiments have been conducted.

Reject: The article has serious flaws or makes no original contribution, and the paper is rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal.

 

Editors and Journal Staff as Authors

Editorial independence is extremely important and System Theory, Control, and Computing Journal does not interfere with editorial decisions. Editorial staff or editors shall not be involved in the processing of their own academic work. Submissions authored by editorial staff/editors will be assigned to at least three independent outside reviewers. Decisions will be made by other editorial board members who do not have a conflict of interest with the author. Journal staff are not involved in the processing of their own work submitted to System Theory, Control, and Computing Journal.

 

Author Appeals

Authors may appeal a rejection by sending an e-mail to the journal's Editorial Office. The appeal must provide a detailed justification, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Editor's comments. The Editor-in-Chief of the journal will forward the manuscript and related information (including the identities of the referees) to an Editorial Board member. The editor will identify a suitable external scientist if no appropriate Editorial Board member is available. The Editorial Board member will be asked to give an advisory recommendation on the manuscript and may recommend acceptance, further peer-review, or uphold the original rejection decision. A reject decision at this stage will be final and cannot be revoked.

 

Production and Publication

Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo professional copy-editing, English editing, proofreading by the authors, final corrections, pagination, and publication.