The editorial board of the journal "National Psychological Journal" selects articles for publication from among the manuscripts received for review. When accepting a manuscript (even before the review process begins), the editorial board evaluates the article's compliance with the thematic focus of the journal, with the requirements for article design, and for the level of originality (the “Antiplagiat VUZ” system). If at least one of the listed requirements is not met, the article is rejected and is not submitted for review. Provided that the initial check is successfully completed, the manuscript is sent for expert evaluation.
Reviewing process
The editorial board of "National Psychological Journal" carries out a double-blind review procedure for all incoming manuscripts that correspond to the journal's scientific scope and have passed the check for plagiarism (using the “Antiplagiat VUZ” system).
• Leading, acknowledged specialists in their fields who are experts in the subject matter of the manuscript being reviewed, as well as a consultant in the field of statistical data processing and scientometrics are involved in the review.
• The editorial board appoints several reviewers to evaluate the manuscript, usually at least two. The decision on the selection of reviewers is made by the editorial board headed by the editor-in-chief.
• Articles are reviewed both by the members of the editorial board and by invited reviewers - leading Russian and foreign specialists. The selection of two experts is carried out by members of the editorial board taking into account the subject matter of the submitted materials.
• The double-blind reviewing presupposes that the names of the reviewers are not disclosed to the authors, the reviewers do not know the names of the authors. The manuscript undergoes examination only in an anonymous (depersonalized) presentation.
• The editors of the journal set a deadline for reviewers to review the manuscript of 4 weeks from the date of its submission for review. Reviewers are supposed to express their consent to review the manuscript and agree on the deadline for submitting the manuscript. The review period may be extended if the reviewer sends the editors a justification for the delay in reviewing.
• In case of a conflict of interest, reviewers are required to notify the editorial board and/or the editor-in-chief and refuse to review the manuscript. The editors of the journal will inform reviewers of other requirement on responsibility and the need to comply with ethical standards (see the Ethics Policy section: https://npsyj.ru/en/about/editorial-ethics/).
• Interaction with reviewers and authors is carried out via the electronic editorial office.
• The editors inform reviewers that the copyright to the manuscript belongs to the authors and the information in it is not subject to disclosure.
• Reviews are stored in the electronic editorial office of the journal and are provided upon request by the editor-in-chief of the journal, authors, scientific electronic library (elibrary.ru platform), and the Higher Attestation Commission under the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.
• The review must be objective and contain an assessment of both the advantages and disadvantages of the scientific work. The text of the review must be constructive and polite, not containing criticism of the authors' personalities, etc.
• The review form is stored in the electronic editorial office. It structurally and substantively reflects the following points: the relevance of the article, scientific novelty, strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript, the correctness of the results and conclusions obtained, compliance of the manuscript design with the editorial requirements (the correspondence of the abstract to the content of the article, the quality of the cited sources, the list of references are taken into account), as well as the adequacy of the application of statistical processing methods. At the end of the review, reviewers make grounded conclusions on the content of the manuscript, providing recommendations to the authors. Reviewers can make comments on the writing style, its correctness and the accuracy of the wording.
• At the end of the reviewing process, the reviewers make one of the three decisions: to recommend the article for publication without revision, to recommend the article for publication after revision, or to reject the manuscript without publication.
• The results of the reviewing for each manuscript are discussed by the editorial board in order to make a final decision on the manuscript. The editors inform the authors of the editorial board's decision based on the reviewing results.
• If the manuscript contains inaccuracies or does not meet the criteria specified in the review form, the authors receive an anonymous review and/or an article with reviewers' comments and recommendations for revision of the article.
• As a result of the reviewing, articles must be accepted or rejected. The proportion of rejected articles in the journal is 42% (58% of the articles are accepted).
• Manuscripts that were rejected based on the review results are not reviewed again. If the author(s) of the rejected article submit another manuscript, it is reviewed as a new one according to the usual procedure.
• After revision by the authors, articles are sent for re-review to the same reviewer who made the comments the author responded to. If the reviewer for some reason refuses or is unable to re-review the article within the established deadline, the editors appoint another reviewer.
• If the review results are debatable, for example, one reviewer gives a positive conclusion and another one draws a negative one, the editors reserve the right to send the article to a third reviewer or appoint a meta-reviewer who will analyze all the reviews and make a final decision based on the results of two (or more) reviews.
• If the authors refuse to revise the manuscript according to the reviewers' constructive comments without explaining their decision, the editors reserve the right to reject the manuscript by sending the authors a reasoned refusal to publish their article.
• Authors are asked to revise the manuscript within 2 months. During this time, the authors must send the manuscript, completely revised based on the reviewers' comments. The manuscript is accompanied with a response to the reviewers for each comment received, formatted as a table in a separate MS Word file. If there are comments with which the author(s) do not agree, it is necessary to give a reasoned response to the reviewer in the same file.
• If the authors fundamentally disagree with the review results, they can ask the editors for additional review. In extreme cases, the authors have the right to withdraw the manuscript from the journal.
• After the manuscript passed through all the stages of review and revision, the editorial board, headed by the editor-in-chief, makes the final decision on the publication of the article.
• When the editorial board makes a decision to publish the manuscript and after the editor-in-chief approves the final content of the issue, the authors are informed on the specific issue in which the article will be published. Upon request from the authors, the editors provide a certificate of acceptance of the article for publication in the established form.
• If necessary, the editorial office carries out literary, scientific, and technical editing of the manuscript. The editors also agree with the authors on the draft (in Word format) and final (layout in pdf format) versions.
• After the decision to accept the article for publication, the manuscript is included in the calendar plan for publication.
Ethical aspects of the interaction between the editorial office, the editor-in-chief, the editorial board, reviewers, and authors can be found in the Ethics policy section https://npsyj.ru/en/about/editorial-ethics/