Peer Review Policy

All scientific articles submitted to the editorial office of the journal «Medieval History of Central Eurasia», and successfully passing the check for compliance with technical formatting and plagiarism, are sent together with the result by the responsible editor to the reviewers. The articles undergo a mandatory double-blind peer review procedure (the authors' names are not known to the reviewers, and the reviewers' names are not known to the authors).

A member of the editorial board responsible for scientific areas, without indicating any information about the authors, sends the article through the online system of the journal's website to two independent scholars – reviewers in the corresponding subject or in areas close to the topic of the research. Members of the editorial board cannot serve as reviewers. Reviewers are invited specialists registered in the journal’s reviewer database. Depending on each specific case, the review period is determined by the editorial office. Responsibility for the quality and timeliness of the article manuscript review lies with the responsible editor.

Peer review is conducted confidentially. Reviewers must remember that the manuscripts sent to them are the intellectual property of the authors and contain information that must not be disclosed. Breach of confidentiality is possible only if the reviewer reports the unreliability or falsification of the materials presented in the manuscript. A reviewer has the right to refuse to review if a direct conflict of interest is found in the manuscript materials when interpreting the data.

If the review contains recommendations for revision and improvement of the article, the author must take them into account when preparing a new version of the article or reasonably refute them (in whole or in part). The revised (reworked) article is resubmitted for review to the same reviewer who provided the critical comments.

An article not recommended for publication by the reviewer is not accepted for reconsideration. The presence of a positive review is not sufficient grounds for publication. The final decision on the advisability of publication is made by the editor-in-chief and the responsible editor.

The following are not accepted for publication:

– articles that do not meet the formatting requirements and whose authors refuse technical revision;

– articles whose authors do not follow or reasonably refute the reviewer’s comments;

– articles that fail the plagiarism check or have low originality scores;

– articles that lack scientific novelty, do not reflect scientific methodology or results of source analysis.

Guidelines for review content.

Master’s and doctoral students are required to submit a review by their scientific supervisor recommending the article for publication (this is not required for authors who already hold a scientific degree).

Instead of a supervisor’s or consultant’s review, a review by a leading expert in the field or a decision of the Academic Council of the institution where the article was written may be submitted. All reviews and recommendations must be submitted electronically in Word format, along with a scanned version of the signed and stamped original from the organization where the work was carried out. Volume: up to 0.5 page.

The review must contain a qualified analysis of the article material, an objective and reasoned assessment, and well-founded recommendations for publication in open access. Reviewers assess articles according to a standard form and a set of criteria, including: clarity of the article title; relevance of the topic and its priority for the journal; interest for specialists and the general reader; compliance of article content with the profile and scientific requirements of the journal; type of article (fundamental, interdisciplinary, applied, review, abstract); scientific novelty of the problem statement and its solution; usefulness of data, conclusions, and recommendations for practice; reliance on authoritative sources and scientific literature; use of empirical research results (including those conducted by the author); language and style, scientific rigor; methods used by the author and research results; alignment of proposals with current scientific achievements; overall length and rationality of structure (text, illustrations, references); relevance and consistency of illustrative material with the topic; the place of the manuscript in historiography (repetition of previously published works by other authors or the article’s author); presence of factual errors or falsification by the author; compliance with the journal’s formatting requirements, abstract and keyword preparation, and reference list.

Reviewer’s comments and suggestions must be objective and principled, aimed at improving the scientific quality of the manuscript.

The final part of the review must contain clear and well-reasoned conclusions about the article as a whole and an explicit recommendation on its suitability for publication:

– the article is recommended for publication as is;

– the article is recommended for publication after correction of the reviewer’s comments;

– the article requires additional review by another expert;

– the article cannot be published in the journal.

The date of receipt of the article by the editorial office is taken into account in determining its place in the publication queue.

The average time for manuscript review is 1 month.