Editorial and Peer Review Process
Editorial and Peer Review Process
Peer-reviewed manuscript: The submitted manuscript of Mini-review, Meta-analysis, Clinical Trial, Visual Experiment, and Research Article are peer-reviewed. Letter to the Editor is not peer-reviewed.
Initial Internal Editorial Review
| Initially, we do the internal editorial review with the purpose of a) avoiding unnecessary delay in deciding the manuscript and b) avoiding manuscript overload. |
Using this method, about one-third of all submitted manuscripts are rejected without peer review. That is, initial rejection is often much quicker. In that case, authors have the option to submit their manuscript to another journal without unnecessary delay.
| > Is the research unethical? If yes, then we reject the manuscript. |
| > We read the title of the manuscript and then think whether is it within our area of priority. |
[Authors are requested to read some of the Table of Contents of the issues of our journal published within the last 2-5 years. This will help you to find out our area of priority. Some of the non-priority areas are, for example, antihypertensive drugs, anti-HIV agents, molecular docking without the data of wet lab, nanotechnology, etc].
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> If your topic is not within our priority area, we directly reject the manuscript. If yes, then find out the 2 or 3 main keywords from the title. |
[For example, Mr. X is a corresponding author and has submitted a manuscript “Larvicidal, leishmanicidal, insecticidal and anthelmintic effects of Sterculia diversifolia stem bark and leaf†to the Bangladesh Journal of Pharmacology. The keywords are Anthelmintic; Insecticidal; Larvicidal; Leishmanicidal; Sterculia diversifolia. Then we browse the www.google.com and www. scholar.google.com web search engines. In the search space, copy and paste two words, Sterculia diversifolia and Anthelmintic. Then enter the key and find out if there any published data]
| > If there is published data (duplicate publication), then we directly reject the manuscript. If not, then we go through the abstract of the manuscript and then do the plagiarism check.
> Make one copy of the manuscript. Delete the title page, figures, and references. Then rest part of the manuscript is checked by dependable plagiarism software (more is written in the plagiarism section). If the percentage of plagiarism is more than 10 (ten), then we reject the manuscript directly without any explanation. We have software to detect image manipulation as well. |
Screenshot showing the percentage of plagiarism by the colored text of a manuscript
| > If the contents are informative and will be useful to our readers, then we think whether the manuscript was written according to our journal style.
> Are there:
> Is the manuscript written according to our journal style? > If the editorial office is satisfied, then we decide to send an email to the corresponding author to prepare and submit a video clip of one methodology. There is no time limit to submit the video clip. > When we get the video clip (only in the case of the Research Article), we review it whether it is acceptable or not. If not, then request the author to improve it. Otherwise, the manuscript is rejected. > If yes, then our office checks the English language, grammar, and typographical mistakes using software (more in the English grammar section). Our office corrects the minor mistakes on behalf of the authors. If the English language and grammar are too bad, then we request the corresponding author to correct it by themselves and send it again to us. > Our layout editor prepares the dummy Article (formatted text with proper placement of image, Figure(s), and Table(s), if any). [This is helpful for easy review by the External Editors and saves time and labor] > Finally the dummy Article is sent to external reviews. The usual reasons for rejection at this stage are
> It usually takes about 3-10 days. |
External Peer-Review
| Review of a manuscript is done by either single-blind, double-blind, or none. The Bangladesh Journal of Pharmacology practices the single-blind peer review where the reviewer will know the authors’ names, but the reviewer’s name will not be disclosed to the authors. The review report will appear in the editorial decision letter where it can be read by the authors. |
| > If any manuscript passes the first step and meets the Criteria for Publication, then the manuscript is sent to two independent external reviewers (preferably reviewers from other countries) for comment/advice
> External reviewers are given 3 weeks to complete the review |
