After Submission
What happens now?
After you have submitted your manuscript through the Awareness journal’s EditorialManagerTM submission portal, these are the steps that will follow:
Initial Checks
The journal staff and editorial team first perform initial quality checks to identify potential issues such as:
- Competing interests
- Compliance with journal policies
- Research ethical standards
- Financial disclosures
- Plagiarism check
Manuscripts with significant concerns may be returned to authors for changes or clarifications at this stage.
Editorial Review
After completing internal checks, each new submission is assigned to a Reviewing Editor with relevant expertise. The Reviewing Editor is usually a member of the Awareness Editorial Board, but occasionally a Guest may be invited to serve as Reviewing Editor for your manuscript. The assigned editor reviews the manuscript against our publication criteria and determines whether reviews from additional experts are needed to evaluate the manuscript.
Peer Review
During the submission process you were asked to indicate any specific reviewers who should or should not be invited to review your manuscript. We will respect your request so long as it does not interfere with the objective and thorough assessment of your manuscript.
The Reviewing Editor selects additional reviewers based on expertise, publication history, and past reviews, and invites them to provide feedback on the manuscript. After agreeing to review, external peer reviewers typically have 14-21 days to submit their review. The journal office will follow up with late reviewers and keep you informed if there are any significant delays. The Awareness journal uses single-anonymized peer review. Reviewers remain anonymous unless they choose to identify themselves by signing their name to their review in the journal’s EditorialManagerTM submission system.
All original research and review articles undergo outside scientific peer review by at least two peer reviewers. Original research articles and some review articles also undergo dedicated statistical review to ensure that the conclusions drawn are supported by your data. All articles reviewed by Awareness will have received primary peer review with at least two outside peer reviews and up to 5 peer reviews. Additional outside scientific review may be sought if the editors feel that the peer review was inadequate. All authors are expected to respond to the issues raised in the peer review process.
All articles which contain statistical inference undergo statistical peer review. Because the specific aspects of statistical peer review are limited, Awareness will appoint dedicated statistical peer reviewers. These reviewers make sure that the evidence presented supports the scientific claims made by the authors.
When indicated, a statistical reviewer may write a “Statistical Editorial” when there is a certain point of interest in the data or its analysis that provides a teaching opportunity. Statistical Review articles, meaning submitted articles that review an area of interface between a research area and statistical inference, undergo external peer review by both statistical experts and scholars in that field. In all cases, authors are expected to respond in writing to all manuscript reviews as monitored by the article’s editor.
Peer Review is single-blind (i.e., the reviewers knows the identity of authors, but the authors do not know the identity of reviewers) and is conducted under the guidance given by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (https://www.icmje.org/), the Committee on Publication Ethics (https://publicationethics.org/), and the Council of Science Editors (https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/); additional information can be found at these respective websites. Peer reviewers are reminded at the time they accept the article to review that the material they are being asked to review should be kept strictly confidential (i.e., not shared with anyone).
Reviewers
Reviewers who agree to review a manuscript are immediately asked to disclose any personal, professional, or financial conflicts with the authors and/or the topic in the manuscript. When a conflict arises, the editors seek out alternate reviewers. We ask for reviews to be returned within two weeks of the reviewer agreeing to undertake the project. Reviewed materials are considered privileged information and cannot be copied or shared.
Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript as outlined above, which may prohibit the uploading of the manuscript to software or other technologies where confidentiality cannot be assured. Reviewers should disclose to journals if and how AI technology is being used to facilitate their review. Reviewers must be aware that AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased.
Editorial Decisions
The Reviewing Editor or staff editor makes the final decision on each manuscript. The time to render a first decision averages about 21 days, but times vary depending on how long it takes for the editor to receive and assess reviews.
The Reviewing Editor considers reviewer feedback and their own evaluation of the manuscript in order to reach a decision. Then they communicate their decision of the Editor and Co-Editor, by choosing one of the following decisions:
- Accept after Minor Revisions:
The paper is accepted in principle after minor revisions based on the reviewers’ comments. Authors are given 7 days for minor revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and highlight revisions in the manuscript. - Reconsider after Major Revisions:
The acceptance of the manuscript dependent on the author’s revisions. The author needs to provide a point-by-point response to each comment or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewers’ comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript are provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within 2 weeks, and the revised manuscript will be returned to the reviewer(s) for further comments or final acceptance. If the required revision time is longer than 2 months from the initial review, we will recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting as a new article. - Reject and Encourage Resubmission:
If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions or major flaws exist in the scientific rigor, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further experiments have been conducted or the flaws removed. - Reject and Decline Resubmission:
The article has serious flaws, or makes no original contribution, or it is based on faulty reasoning, or it cannot be improved. No offer of resubmission to the journal will be provided.
Decisions are communicated to the corresponding author in a formal letter, along with reviewer feedback and any other requirements from the journal office.
Accepted Manuscripts
Awareness uses two levels of acceptance decisions. When the Reviewing Editor is satisfied with the scientific aspects of the manuscript they will issue an editorial decision. This is a provisional acceptance, pending final checks, approval by the Section Editor or the Editorial Board, formatting and technical requirements. Once the final requirements are fulfilled, the journal office will send a formal accept decision, and your manuscript will move into the production phase.
After formatting and typesetting, your final manuscript will be posted online on the journal’s website and placed in the queue for full publication in the next issue of the journal. At the time of full publication, the article is assigned volume and page numbers, and it is also placed in various searchable databases.
Appeals
Authors may submit a formal appeal for rejected submissions. Appeal requests must be made in writing to: awareness.journals@sssuhe.ac.in; with the word “APPEAL” in the subject line. Authors must provide detailed reasons for the appeal and point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Reviewing Editor's comments. Decisions on appeals are final without exception. Priority is given to new submissions, so the appeal process may take longer than the original submission process.