APN follows a strict peer review process for all manuscripts submitted to the APN Science Bulletin. 

Initial manuscript evaluation 

The Managing Editor first evaluates all manuscripts. The Managing Editor provides feedback on the originality, scientific rigour, English grammar, and suggestions on alignment with the aims and scope of the Bulletin. Manuscripts that meet the minimum criteria are normally passed on to at least two experts for peer review.

Peer Review 

The APN Science Bulletin employs single blind reviewing, where the reviewers remain anonymous during the entire review process.

APN maintains a roster of external reviewers who volunteer to review manuscripts submitted to APN by registering at https://www.apn-gcr.org/lime/661979. 

Reviewers are matched to the manuscript by the editorial team according to reviewers’ expertise. In some cases, authors are asked to suggest reviewers for consideration by the editorial team.

Review process

Reviewers are asked to fill out a peer review form to evaluate whether the manuscript is original, is methodologically sound, has results that are clearly presented and support the conclusions, and correctly references previous relevant work. 

Peer reviewers are not required to perform language correction, but may suggest edits if they wish.

The editorial team forwards reviewer recommendations to authors, which usually include verbatim comments by the reviewers. Revised manuscripts are normally returned to the initial reviewers who may request for another revision or recommend the manuscript for publication.

Decision making

The Managing Editor is responsible for the decision to accept or reject the article by considering the recommendations by the reviewer. 

The Managing Editor’s decision is final.