AJLS operates a comprehensive peer-review process. In most cases this is a double-blind assessment with at least two independent reviewers, followed by a final acceptance/rejection decision by the Editor-in-Chief, or another academic editor approved by the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the academic quality of the publication process, including acceptance decisions.

Initial check

After a manuscript submission, initial check is carried out by the journal staff:

• Suitability of the manuscript is determined whether it is prepared according to AJLS author guidelines and they have followed the ethical policies/guidelines of the journal.

• Manuscripts that do not fit the journal's ethics policy or do not meet the standards of the journal will be rejected before peer-review.

• Manuscript that is not properly prepared will be returned to the author for revision and resubmission.

• After these checks, the journal staff/or assistant editor will consult the journals' Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editors to determine whether the manuscript fits the scope of the journal and whether it is scientifically sound.

• No judgment on the potential impact of the work will be made at this stage. Reject decisions at this stage will be verified by the Editor-in-Chief.

• Plagiarism check: All submissions will be subjected to plagiarism evaluation before editorial processing. Authors should be experienced enough to differentiate ethical behaviors (e.g. citation and quotation) from unethical ones (e.g. general plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and copy-and-paste). Manuscripts that cannot pass the plagiarism (<19%) evaluation pre-screening, will be automatically rejected without review and the plagiarism evaluation will not be provided to authors and strict action will be taken against author. All papers submitted must pass through an initial screening and will be checked through the advanced plagiarism detection software (Turnitin).

Peer-review

AJLS operate double-blind peer review, meaning that the author and reviewer does not know the identity of each other.

At least two review reports are collected for each submitted article. Suggestions of reviewers can be made by the academic editor during pre-check. Alternatively, Chief Editor or editor will use qualified Editorial Board Members, qualified reviewers from our database, or new reviewers identified by web searches for related articles.

Checks applied to all reviewers:

• That they hold no conflicts of interest with the authors, including if they have published together in the last five years.

• That they hold a PhD (preferable).

• They must have recent publications in the field of the submitted paper

• We ask reviewers to inform the journal editor if they hold a conflict of interests that may prejudice the review report, either in a positive or negative way.

• Enough guidelines must be provided to reviewers together with a review comments form for recording comments.

Invited reviewers will be asked to:

• Accept or decline any invitations quickly, based on the manuscript title and abstract

• Suggest alternative reviewers if an invitation must be declined

• Request an extension in case more time is required to compose a report

• Let us know if anyone else, such as a student, will participate in writing the review.

As part of the assessment, reviewers will be asked:

• to rate the originality/novelty, significance, quality of the presentation, scientific soundness, interest to the readers, overall merit and English level of the manuscript;

• to provide a detailed, constructive review report.

• to provide an overall recommendation for the publication of the manuscript;

1. Accept in Present Form: The paper is accepted without any further changes.

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

3. 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 ten days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.

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

Manuscripts submitted to AJLS should meet the highest standards of publication ethics:

• Manuscripts should only report results that have not been submitted or published before, even in part.

• Manuscripts must be original and should not reuse text from another source without appropriate citation.

• For biological studies, the studies reported should have been carried out in accordance with generally accepted ethical research standards.

If reviewers become aware of such scientific misconduct or fraud, plagiarism or any other unethical behavior related to the manuscript, they should raise these concerns with the in-house editor immediately. Reviewers must not recommend citation of work by themselves or close colleagues when it is not clearly necessary to improve the quality of the manuscript under review.

To assist academic editors, AJLS staff handle all communication with reviewers, authors, and the external editor; however, Academic Editors can check the status of manuscripts and the identity of reviewers at any time. Reviewers are given 14-21 days to write their review. For the review of a revised manuscript, reviewers are asked to provide their report within 5 days. In both cases, extensions can be granted on request.

A paper can only be accepted for publication by an academic editor, editor or chief editor based on expert reviewers' comments.

Journal editors will check to make sure that there is no conflict of interests before contacting reviewers and will not consider those with competing interests. Reviewers are asked to declare any conflicts of interest. Authors can also enter the names of potential peer reviewers they wish to exclude from consideration in the peer review of their manuscript, during the initial submission progress. The editorial team will respect these requests so long as this does not interfere with the objective and thorough assessment of the submission.

Editor Decision

Acceptance decisions on manuscripts, after double blind peer review, are made by an editor, either the Editor-in-Chief, or another suitable Editorial Board member. When making an editorial decision, we expect that the academic editor checks the following:

• The suitability of selected reviewers;

• Adequacy of reviewer comments and author response;

• Overall scientific quality of the paper.

Editorial Decisions and revisions:

All the manuscripts published in AJLS go through the peer-review process and receive at least two reviews. All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response (response to reviewer’s comments). The Editor will communicate the decision to author, 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 five 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 a suitable time frame, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments.

Reject and Encourage Resubmission:

If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript 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, and/or makes no original significant contribution. No offer of resubmission to the journal is provided.

If there is any suspicion that a paper may contain plagiarism, the editorial office will check using the Turnitin software.

Reviewers make recommendations, and Editors-in-Chief are free to disagree with their views. If they do so, they should justify their decision, for the benefit of the authors.

Editorial independence is extremely important, and publisher does not interfere with editorial decisions. No paper is published without the agreement of an academic editor and AJLS staff do not advise academic editors or chief editor about accepting or rejecting articles.

AJLS staff or editorial board members (including Editors-in-Chief) are not involved in the processing their own academic work.

Revision

In cases where only minor revisions are recommended, the author is usually requested to revise the paper before referring to the editor. Articles may or may not be sent to reviewers after author revision, dependent on whether the reviewer requested to see the revised version and the wishes of the Academic editor. Apart from in exceptional circumstances, we allow a maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript.

Author Appeal

Authors may appeal a rejection by sending an e-mail to the Editorial Office of the journal. The appeal must provide a detailed justification, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Editor's comments. The Managing Editor of the journal will forward the manuscript and related information (including the identities of the referees) to the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor, or Editorial Board member. The academic Editor being consulted 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 is final and cannot be reversed.

Production and Publication

AJLS carries out production on all manuscripts, including language editing, copy editing and conversion to final format. Language editing is carried out by professional English editing staff. In the small number of cases where extensive editing or formatting is required, we send article to author. The authors are also free to use other English editing service or consult a native English-speaking colleague—the latter being our preferred option. Galley proofs are also sent to authors for minor errors and mistakes which should be returned to editorial office within 2 days. After all corrections and formatting article will be published on www.ajlifesciences.com.

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