The review process

The peer review process is a critical mechanism for maintaining the scientific integrity, quality, and relevance of academic publishing. At Studies and Scientific Researches. Economics Edition (SCECO), all manuscripts undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review, ensuring that the identities of both authors and reviewers remain confidential throughout the process.

1. Submission and Initial Screening

Once a manuscript is submitted through the Open Journal Systems (OJS), the editorial office performs an initial screening to ensure:

  • Relevance to the journal's scope — the economics of emerging and transition economies, with a particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe — and to its thematic areas
  • Compliance with formatting and ethical guidelines
  • Absence of plagiarism or major ethical issues

As part of this stage, the editorial office may employ AI-assisted screening tools to support technical and integrity checks, including plagiarism detection, verification of numerical and statistical consistency, reference validation, and assessment of alignment with the journal's scope. The outputs of these tools serve exclusively as decision-support for the editorial team.

Submissions that do not meet these basic requirements may be desk-rejected before entering the review process. All desk-rejection decisions are made by human editors.

2. Editorial Triage

The Editor-in-Chief or assigned Section Editor evaluates the submission for its potential scholarly contribution, informed — where applicable — by the AI-assisted screening report. At this stage, the manuscript may be:

  • Sent for peer review
  • Returned for resubmission with technical corrections
  • Rejected due to insufficient novelty or poor alignment with journal priorities

3. Reviewer Assignment

Each manuscript is reviewed by two independent human experts with subject-area expertise and no conflict of interest. Reviewers are selected based on:

  • Academic qualifications
  • Previous reviewing experience
  • Match with manuscript topic and methodology

Where verifiable technical issues have been identified during editorial screening, reviewers may receive an anonymized summary of these findings as a starting point for their independent evaluation. This is disclosed to reviewers as originating from the editorial screening stage.

4. Criteria for Evaluation

Reviewers assess the manuscript according to the following criteria:

  • Originality and innovation
  • Relevance and significance of the research question
  • Robustness of the methodology
  • Clarity, structure, and academic style
  • Strength of results and their implications
  • Ethical integrity of research and data usage

Reviewers are invited to recommend one of the following decisions: Accept, Minor revision, Major revision, or Reject. They are also expected to provide constructive, anonymous feedback for the authors. All peer review reports must reflect the reviewer's own expert judgement.

5. Editorial Decision

Based on reviewer reports, the editor makes a formal decision:

  • Accept: Manuscript is ready for publication (with or without minor edits)
  • Revise and Resubmit: Authors are asked to improve the manuscript in line with comments
  • Reject: Manuscript is not suitable for publication in its current form

If revisions are requested, authors are encouraged to submit a detailed response letter outlining how each reviewer comment was addressed.

6. Revision Cycle

Revised manuscripts may undergo a second round of peer review — typically by the original reviewers. Resubmissions are also re-screened for technical consistency, including changes in authorship, data, or methodology relative to the original submission, which must be declared by the authors. This process may repeat until a final editorial decision is reached.

7. Final Acceptance and Publication

Once a manuscript is accepted, it proceeds to the copyediting, proofreading, and typesetting stage. Accepted articles may be published as Online First — assigned a DOI and made citable — prior to their inclusion in a specific issue. All articles are published open access under the CC BY 4.0 license and assigned a DOI.

8. Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Editorial Process

SCECO acknowledges the growing role of AI-assisted tools in scholarly publishing and applies them in a transparent, limited, and human-supervised manner, in line with COPE guidance and Scopus/Elsevier recommendations on generative AI.

Permitted uses (editorial office only):

  • Plagiarism and text-similarity detection
  • Verification of numerical, arithmetic, and statistical consistency (e.g., reported test statistics, diagnostic tests, internal coherence of tables)
  • Reference and citation checking, including detection of anomalous citation patterns
  • Assessment of fit with the journal's aims, scope, and geographic focus
  • Language and copyediting support at the post-acceptance stage

Strict limits:

  • AI tools are never used to generate peer review reports, and no AI system acts as a reviewer of record. All peer review evaluations are conducted by human experts, and all editorial decisions are made by human editors, who bear full responsibility for them.
  • Reviewers are not permitted to upload manuscripts, review materials, or editorial correspondence into AI platforms, or to generate review content using AI tools, without prior written authorization from the editorial office. This restriction protects the confidentiality of the double-blind process.
  • Any substantive use of AI-assisted tools in the editorial process is documented in the journal's editorial records and is auditable.

By submitting a manuscript, authors consent to the use of AI-assisted screening tools by the editorial office under strict confidentiality and data-protection conditions.

9. Commitment to Quality and Ethics

SCECO follows the COPE Code of Conduct for Editors and Reviewers. We take allegations of plagiarism, duplicate publication, undeclared changes in authorship, or unethical research very seriously. Reviewers and editors are expected to declare any conflicts of interest and adhere to confidentiality at all times, including with respect to the use of AI tools as described in Section 8.

Why Peer Review Matters

  • Quality control: Ensures methodological rigor and academic integrity
  • Improvement: Authors benefit from expert feedback
  • Credibility: Reviewed work holds greater weight in the academic community
  • Transparency: The process is impartial, documented, and traceable through structured editorial records

For more information or to join our reviewer database, please contact the editorial office at sceco@ub.ro.