Peer review process

UCJ uses a double blinded peer review procedure, which means that both the identity of the reviewer and that of the author are concealed from the other reviewers before, during and after the review process.

Editorial staff should never be involved in editorial decisions about their own work.

Editorial staff (including peer reviewers) should withdraw from discussions about submissions where any circumstances might prevent them from offering unbiased editorial decisions.

Peer reviewers who regularly produce poor quality work, will be removed from the editorial board. Poor quality work includes work that is tardy, abusive, unconstructive or work that is handed in too late.

It is allowed that peer-reviewers delegate peer-review to members of their staff, provided that they inform the editor of UCJ about it.

Editors may choose a peer-reviewer who is suggested by the author, but are not obligated to follow the author's request. Likewise, authors may suggest that a certain peer-reviewer is not used, but this does not give any guarantees that this suggestion is followed by the editor.

Peer-review comments or published correspondence should not contain personal attacks on the authors.

To protect the author, a submitted manuscript should be destroyed by the peer-reviewer after they have reviewed it.

Authors do not have the right to veto comments about their work, preferred that the comment is not a personal attack on the author himself.

If agreement during the peer-review process cannot be reached, editors may invite one or multiple other peer-reviewers to review the article. The editor's decision following such an appeal is final.