Peer-review process

Peer-review is considered as a process for obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers who are experts in the field.

Each manuscript of academic article that is submitted for publishing in “Proceedings of LAS”, section A is evaluated by two peer-reviewers. If two reviewers have given controversial evaluations, Editor-in-Chief of the Section A may invite the third reviewer. Peer-reviewed articles are identified by note “The article is peer-reviewed” and given a DOI number.

Reviewed articles are treated confidentially. Reviewers fulfil their duties anonymously, on the basis of the “Code of ethics for scientists“, “Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement of “Proceedings of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences”“, codes of ethics of the respective science disciplines and international norms regarding ethics. Anonymity of an author is provided so that peer reviewers receive articles with deleted name and other information about an author. Anonymity of peer reviewers is provided so that author receives articles with deleted names of peer reviewer. 

Evaluation procedure should start not later than within one month from the day when a manuscript has been submitted to the Editor-in-Chief. Together with manuscripts of articles, reviewers are provided with instructions for reviewers of manuscripts (articles) and evaluation form (see HERE). By signing the filled form the reviewer confirms not only his(her) evaluation, but also that he(she) is not in the conflict of interests with the author(s) of a manuscript.

Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not cited in the manuscript.

The Editor-in-Chief selects reviewers so that to assure objectivity of evaluation. Peer-reviewers should be experts in the field of the science discipline of the reviewed article. It is advised that a peer-reviewers are members of LAS, experts of the Latvian Science Council or Editorial Board, including its foreign members, but this is not obligatory requirement. When selecting peer-reviewers, the main criteria are correspondence to the article’s topic, scientific qualification and non-existence of the conflict of interests.

Editor-in-Chief holds updated Register of peer-reviewers that includes general information about an expert – name, scientific qualification, research interests, place of work, and information about performed evaluations – name of an author and issue, when an article was published.

Received evaluations are registered in the Register of reviews and anonymous copies of evaluations are sent to an author. The author is invited, taking into account the suggestions of reviewers and in cooperation with editors, to improve the manuscript or to provide motivated explanation to Editor-in-Chief why this is not reasonable or possible.

Decision about publication of an article or returning it to an author for additions, or rejection of publication is taken by Editor-in-Chief of the Section A. In case an editor has been changed, a new editor should not overturn the decision to publish submissions made by the previous editor unless serious problems are identified.

Before publishing all of a journals content is additionally evaluated by the Editorial Council.

The management of the journal reviews peer review practices periodically to see if improvement is possible.