Peer review is the critical assessment of manuscripts submitted to journals by experts who are usually not part of the editorial staff. Because unbiased, independent, critical assessment is an intrinsic part of all scholarly work, including scientific research, peer review is believed to be an important extension of the scientific process.

AMJ uses a double-blind peer review process with the aim to provide the optimal unbiased review of the submitted articles and to avoid publishing unvetted and to improve the quality of the work it publishes in the journal.

The Review Process is as Follows:

The author submits the article to the editorial office in several parts, the cover letter, the title page and the article text document.

The editorial office conducts an initial screening of the submitted article and checks for compliance to the scope, submission guidelines, contribution to new knowledge and plagiarism. At this stage the editorial office decides whether to reject the article or to consider that for further peer review. If the article does not pass the initial screening the editorial office will reject the paper and inform the author of the decision with a reason for that.

If the article passes the initial review the editors identify suitable reviewer and then send the de-identified article to two reviewers who are expert in the area.

The reviewers review the abstract and based on his/her availability, in line with his/her expertise and availability or lack of conflict of interest, decides to review or recuse him/herself. If he agrees to review, he/she reads the full article and appraise that against the guideline of the AMJ and then provide recommendations to the editorial office. He/she will have the following four options in the reviewer’s form to choose from.

1. Accept without changes
2. Acceptance with minor changes (refine need to be made by the journal staff)
3. Acceptance with the changes that the author should make
4. Rejection of the article

The editorial office reviews the recommendations and then if additional input is required from the author, they send to the author to address the comments and then send back a revised version of the article to the editorial office. The editorial office conducts a third round of screening and if it passes this stage of screening the editorial officer sends the revised version again to the reviewers who can then recommend the article to publish. The editorial office then decides based on the recommendation of the reviewers. Once accepted the article may undergo some additional formatting and editing and is sent to the author for proofreading and approval of the final copy for publication. Once approval of the author is obtained the article goes to printing and to online publication as a current issue.

If the opinion of two reviewers differs (1st accept and 2nd reject the article), then the article will be sent to a third reviewer, which his/her opinion will be decisive.

Figure 1: AMJ Peer review process