Review procedure

Course of the reviewing procedure for authors

Contemporary European Studies is a scholarly periodical, anonymously reviewed. The editors regard the reviewing procedure as the principal prerequisite of quality and expertise of the journal. They aim at objectivity and scholarly precision and at an increase in the quality of the articles published.

Course of the reviewing procedure

Every article to be published in the Contemporary European Studies will be assessed by two reviewers, of whom only one can be a Czech resident. The reviewers are never told the name of the author of the article and the authors do not know the reviewers‘ names. The editor-in-charge together with the editor-in-chief are responsible for the preservation of this anonymity. The reviewers are chosen by the editor-in-chief, who takes care that the reviewer is not in a working relation to the author.

Only those articles are reviewed that meet the principal standards of publication, i.e. those that meet the instructions for the authors. Before the reviewing procedure starts, the editor-in-chief has the right to reject these contributions and ask the authors to revise them. This applies especially to not having kept the length of the article, the rules of language, grammar, form and content (deviation from the theme, which is the issues of European Studies and related subjects). Only after this revision the texts are submitted for reviewing.

The members of the editorial board can at any time demand to see the manuscripts offered to the editors, including those that were rejected by the editor-in-chief before the reviewing procedure proper started.
  
On the basis of the reviews the editor-in-chief will tell the author whether the text was accepted for publication, whether a revision is required or whether it is rejected. When the author is asked to revise the text or when the text is rejected, he is to be told the main reasons. The texts with two positive reviews will be published by the editor-in-chief in the journal. After a text was revised according to the instructions of the editor-in-chief, it will be published in the journal. When the author does not agree with the viewpoint of the editor-in-chief, he can explain his position in a letter which will immediately be passed by the editor-in-chief to the editorial board.

Futher rules for publishing the contributions:
If one review is positive and the other negative, the text will be sent for reviewing to a third person. All the three reviews will then be judged by the editorial board, who will decide about the publishing or not publishing of the text.
When both reviews are negative, the final decision about the rejection will be made by the editor-in-chief.
When both reviewers recommend a revision, the author will be asked to make the revision according to the reviewers‘ reservations and his text then will be passed either to the reviewer with the most serious reservations or to a third person.
If one review is positive and the other recommends a revision, the author is asked to revise the text and then it will be passed for a new reviewing procedure to the reviewer who requested the revision. If the extent of revision is small, the reviewing will be done by the editor-in-chief.
  When one review is negative and the other required a revision, the editor-in-chief will either propose to the editorial board to reject the article or will ask the author to revise the text and this revised text is then submitted for reviewing to a third person.

In controversial cases the final decision will be made by the editorial board.

The length of the reviewing procedure

The stadrad length of the reviewing procedure is 8 weeks. This time is counted from the delivery of the version of the article under review. Only articles are to be reviewed, not reviews and reviewers‘ texts. The latter are subject to approval by the editor-in-chief.