A manuscript completes peer review at Hindawi once the editor confirms that a manuscript is ready for publication. Typically, it will be the Handling Editor who confirms this decision, unless the journal has a Chief Editor, who will then sign off on the final peer review process. If a manuscript is in a Special Issue, it will be the Guest Editor who confirms the manuscript is ready to proceed to publication. Once the editor has confirmed, the manuscript will enter our post peer-review quality checks.
Our quality checks at Hindawi can be divided into the following two categories:
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Pre-acceptance quality checks - this includes language and similarity checks, author and reference validation and peer review checks.
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Post-acceptance material checks - comprised of file checks, including the main files, figures, supplementary materials, and any declarations in the manuscript.
Language and similarity checks
Quality checks begin at Hindawi after an editor has confirmed a manuscript can be published. First, our team will check that the revised text is written in English, and the word count is appropriate for the article type. Our team will then run a similarity check on the manuscript and review the manuscript’s history on our peer review system.
Author validation and reference checks
We will verify the corresponding and submitting author(s), to ensure that their contact details are correct. This step is essential as we send the corresponding author the galley proofs during production. Then, we check the reference list, ensuring all references are in English and are present in the text. At this stage, we might get in touch with the editors that handled your manuscript if we have any queries to progress your manuscript as efficiently as possible.
Peer-review cycle checks
Peer-review cycle checks are the final part of our quality checks before a manuscript is accepted. These checks are designed to preserve the integrity of the peer-review process and to ensure that the peer-review process has been conducted fairly, thoroughly and in an unbiased way. Our team will do this by reviewing all parties involved in the review process and checking the reviewer reports. If a conflict of interest is spotted during peer-review, your manuscript may be sent for re-review to protect your manuscript from any potential bias.
Acceptance at Hindawi
After our quality checks are completed, you will receive an email notifying you of the manuscript’s acceptance. Our team may be in touch if any updates are required to the manuscript’s figures, supplementary materials, main document, or declarations. We will ask for any missing references, files, or author information, so we have all the materials we need to move the manuscript smoothly through to publication. Once the files have been supplied and reviewed, then your manuscript will be sent to production, where the final preparation for publication can begin.
We are continually reviewing our quality checks to evolve and strengthen our processes. We strive to create an efficient workflow that preserves peer-review integrity while remaining an open and transparent process for authors, editors and reviewers alike. We appreciate all participants’ work in the Hindawi peer-review process and appreciate any opportunity to improve our existing workflows.
This blog post is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). The illustration is by David Jury and is also CC-BY.