Peer Review Policy

Double Blind Peer Review Policy:

• Expression Journal applies a double-blind peer review procedure, which means that both the identity of the reviewer and that of the author are concealed 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 a 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 the journal 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.

General rules for reviewers

1. If the reviewer feels that s/he is not capable of reviewing the manuscript s/he must promptly return it to the editor.
2. The reviewer must judge the manuscript's scholarly quality and respect the author's intellectual independence. Personal criticism should be avoided.
3. The reviewer should return the manuscript in case of conflict of interest.
4. If the reviewer has a personal or professional connection with the author(s) in a way that the relationship has the potential to bias judgement of the manuscript the editor(s) should be informed.
5. The reviewer should keep the manuscript confidential. No other person should see the manuscript.
6. Judgments, criticisms and suggestions must be clearly explained and expressed in an academic language.
7. Any reference to other publications must be adequately cited so that the editors and author(s) can identify the referred work.
8. The reviewer should pay attention to missing or absent citations.
9. The reviewer should inform the editor(s) in case s/he doubts that there is an excessive similarity between the given text and other previously published works.

10. Disclosing unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations of a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author is not allowed.
11. The reviewer should complete the task within the given time. If a deadline extension is needed the editor(s) should be informed.