Peer review

Latest update: 16/02/2023

Review process of Original Articles and Reviews of the RASP 

Pre-evaluation

The manuscripts submitted for the Original Articles and Reviews sections (except for narrative or descriptive reviews) are subjected to a pre-evaluation step which includes two stages. The first stage controls that the article submitted complies with the format requirements of the instructions for authors of the journal; if they are not complied with, the article is returned to the author. Otherwise, if the requirements are complied with, the article enters the second pre-evaluation stage, when it is forwarded to the Associate Editors (AE) board, that will consider its potential interest, appropriateness, originality and timeliness. If the article does not comply with this pre-evaluation second instance, it is rejected in limine, notifying the author/s the general reasons for such decision.

External review

If the submitted article passes the pre-evaluation stage, the Editorial Board (EB) assigns it to an AE, selects two external reviewers, sends them the article, thus starting the peer-review process. The reviewers can accept or reject performing the review, according to their competence, potential conflict of interest and time availability. In case of acceptance, they are requested to use the review guidelines where they must express their recommendation regarding the article, having the possibility to: a) approve for publication; b) approve for publication subject to amendments; or c) reject for publication. It is worth highlighting that this is a double-blind process, therefore, both the reviewers and the authors are unaware of their reciprocal identities. The AE receives the external review reports and analyze them. Besides, the AE assess the completeness and consistency of the report regarding linguistics, logic and methodology. Later, he/she presents a report to the EB so that, based on the AE and external reviewer/s recommendation, it makes an editorial decision on the article according to some of the three above mentioned options.

In those cases in which the external evaluation reports are completely dissimilar, i.e. one reviewer suggests rejecting the article for publication and another reviewer suggests accepting the article for publication without modifications, the EB, at the request of the AE responsible for the article, will evaluate the completeness of both external evaluation reports and, if necessary, will designate a third external evaluator to review it. Once the report of the third evaluator has been received, the AE will analyze it and submit to the EB his/her editorial decision proposal for its consideration.

If the article is accepted subject to amendments, the author is requested to review the article and respond to the observations derived from the peer-review instance, as well as to those potentially made by the AE based on his/her own evaluation. Then, the article is subject to a new review by the assigned AE, who analyzes and assesses if they observations made by the reviewer and by him/her, if any, have been complied with. Following, he/she elaborates a new report and submits it to the EB to decide whether the article is approved or rejected for publication.
In case the article is rejected for publication, a letter to the corresponding author will be sent with a synthesis of the reasons for such decision. It is worth noting that such decision is unquestionable. Otherwise, if the article is approved for publication, the corresponding author will be informed about the decision.

Editing and publication
The article approved for publication will be sent to the copy editor and, after the review and approval by the author and the editor, the article will be published in electronic format. In all cases, the online date of article publication will be published.
The average duration time for the peer-review phase is two months, depending of the availability of reviewers to perform the review. On the other hand, the estimated average time for publication of an article is four months.