Peer-Review Regulations

1. All materials submitted to Vestnik of St. Petersburg University. Management (hereinafter referred to as Journal) shall be registered by the Managing Editor of the Journal including the date of receiving manuscript. No later than 90 days after the manuscript submission, the Editor-in-Chief will make one of the following decisions: recommend the manuscript for discussion at the Editorial Board meeting / request authors to revise the manuscript / reject manuscript.

2. Once submitted, all materials (research papers, literature reviews, case study, etc.) shall be screened and assessed by the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal who will decide whether the paper appropriate for the journal and meets the established formal requirements (article’s title should reflect its content clearly; article should not extend beyond the imposed limits on length; appropriate structure; format, keywords and abstracts in Russian and English; references; digital data, formulas, calculations, etc.; contact information; authors must express their agreement for publication in the Series, etc.) and check for plagiarism, i.e. passing off another’s works, illustrations, tables etc. The initial assessment should not take more than 15 days from the received date.

3. Should the paper be rejected after preliminary assessment, a notice will be sent to authors in writing.

All materials which are not rejected during preliminary assessment are subjected to mandatory independent peer-review by not less than two experts within the same field of research who have academic publications in the field for the last three years. Experts should be Ph.D. or D.Sc. assigned by leading Russian or foreign Universities. At the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal discretion the second and additional peer-review can be performed (by either original or new experts) including the cases where authors were invited to submit a revised manuscript.

4. Academic peer-review can be performed by any qualified specialists (mainly – external) having a candidate or doctorate degree or PhD in the field, as well as members of Editorial Board of the Journal. The author’s name is not disclosed to the reviewer and the reviewer's name is not disclosed to the author, unless otherwise stated with a reviewer in writing.

6. Peer review should: 1) evaluate the content for scientific value and originality; 2) evaluate the content for information value and originality; 3) disclose relation between the submitted paper and literature, publications and up-to-date research in the field; 4) reveal if the article meets all standards of ethics and does not constitute scientific misconduct and breach of publishing ethics; 5) evaluate the content for practical use; 6) evaluate the content for clear and unambiguous style of writing: the results and conclusions should reflect the findings clearly; the article should meet the general and particular format, language and style requirements; the article uses clear and illegible terminology, tables, diagrams, figures and formulas, footnotes, references, etc.; 7) evaluate the content for how it entices the audience to read. Designed by the Editorial Board, the standard form for peer review aims to answer ‘yes/no’ questions and provide a detailed and in-depth account to assess the paper’s suitability for publication.

7. After review, the reviewer will make one of the following decisions: 1) recommend manuscript for publication as it is; 2) recommend manuscript for publication but request a minor revision at authors’ discretion; 3) recommend manuscript for publication provided the author(s) revise their manuscript taking into account reviewers’ comments; 4) reject outright with a right for submission of a revised manuscript; 5) reject outright without being entitled to resubmit. A manuscript may only be revised twice. The revised manuscript submitted after 4 months from the author’s receipt of the review is recognized as a new submission.

8. The Editorial Department of the Journal ensures confidentiality preservation by reviewers of any information about manuscript under peer-review. The reviewer must confirm in writing the acceptance of the obligation to keep undisclosed the very fact of paper creation and its content, etc. It is not allowed to discuss the reviewed manuscript with any third parties. Before publication the reviewers may not use or refer to the material under consideration.