PRE-SUBMISSION

Authors must follow the instructions set in the Author Guidelines. 

SUBMISSION STAGE

Manuscripts that have been submitted will go through an internal review by the Editorial Board, in which:

• The manuscripts will be evaluated whether they are in accordance with the focus and scope of Elsya Journal. The Manuscripts that are not in accordance will be rejected, but if an adjustment is a possibility the authors will be requested to revise.
• The manuscripts will also be checked with Turnitin to identify any evidence of plagiarism before being reviewed by qualified reviewers. If the authors receive the message "Turnitin check: fail" in the Discussion Box, authors will be recommended to revise or the manuscript will be rejected depending on the results of the similarity check.

Authors will receive an email on whether the manuscript has passed the intial review and can proceed to the Review stage within 2-5 days after submission. 

For manuscripts that failed the initial review—depending on the potential of the manuscript—the editors may decide to reject the draft or give authors a chance to revise their paper for a re-submission.

For manuscripts that passed the initial review, the assigned Section Editor will create a second version of the draft where all identity markers (names, affiliation, emails, acknowledged persons/institutions) will be temporarily redacted due to the double-blind peer review policy. The file of the second version will be marked with the code 'v2' in the file name, and it will be the one that is provided to reviewers.

REVIEW STAGE

The editors will request at least two experts to review the manuscript. With the double-blind peer review system, both authors' and reviewers' identities will remain anonymous to each other in all rounds to avoid bias and conflicts of interest.

As you can see in the Peer Reviewing Guidelines, each reviewer will be given 3-5 weeks to complete their reviews. The time can be longer if the assigned reviewers becomes unavailable and further decision will have to await for newly requested reviewers to respond and complete their revisions. Therefore, patience on the authors' part is requested during this stage. If the authors need to publish their papers as soon as possible, they can inform the editor to use the fast track route to make their paper as a high priority and receive rapid responses.

Once the reviewers for each round completed their review, the Editorial Board will arrive at a decision, which can be:

• Accept without Any Changes (acceptance): Elsya Journal will publish the paper in its original form
• Accept with Minor Revision (acceptance): Elsya Journal will publish the paper and asks the author to make small corrections
• Accept after Major Revision (conditional acceptance): Elsya Journal will publish the paper provided the authors make the changes suggested by the reviewers and/or editors
• Major Revisions Required: Elsya Journal will still consider the manuscript, but only after the authors cooperate in making the necessary revisions
• Resubmit Manuscript (conditional rejection): Elsya Journal is willing to reconsider the manuscript in another round of review after the authors make major revisions
• Decline Submission (rejection): Elsya Journal will not publish the paper or reconsider it even if the authors make major revisions

REVISION (ADDITIONAL REVIEW ROUND) STAGE

The corresponding author will be informed of the editorial decision and will be given 2-3 weeks to revise the manuscript. The authors are recommended to reply and response to the reviewers' comments in the attached Word files, although authors do not need to reply on every single comment.

Authors must submit the revised file to the Revision Box. The editors will evaluate the manuscript within 1-7 days and—depending on the latest quality of the manuscript—add an additional round of review or accept/reject the manuscript.

If authors cannot meet the revision deadline, they are free to request multiple times for an extension (the duration of which will vary depending on the circumstances they inform the editors).

If the corresponding authors cannot meet the revision deadline and have not informed the editors about their reasons, the editor will send a first reminder and extend the revision deadline by an additional two weeks. If the corresponding authors receive a third reminder, missed the third deadline extension, and still have not communicated with the editors, Elsya Journal reserves the right to reject the manuscript. Re-submission of the manuscript is acceptable provided the authors have done the necessary revisions.

The Editorial Board is authorized to decide which manuscripts should be published and make necessary changes or adjustment related to language properties without altering the substance. Substance editing would be consulted with the author first.

PRE-ACCEPTANCE

If the editorial board finds the manuscript acceptable for publication, authors will be informed and requested to complete three tasks:

• Complete the payment of article processing/publishing charge (APC can be free due to time-limited special policies or if manuscripts receive automatic waivers).
• Complete author biodata using an attached Word file. Every single author must fulfil the biodata so that their Author Biography under their published papers can be displayed. The editors will refer to the biodata to create the Letter of Acceptance (LoA).
• Endorse Elsya Journal in Publons, a free website that allows researchers to track publications, citation metrics, peer reviews, and journal editing. 

Detailed instructions on how to complete each task will be sent in the email.

After the editorial board has confirmed that all authors have fulfiled all three tasks, we will send the authors their Letter of Acceptance (LoA) and start to copyedit the manuscript.

COPYEDITING STAGE

The editors will take care of the manuscript in this stage. However, authors must frequently check the Discussion Box for further instructions if necessary. The Copyeditor will inform the authors to submit their biodata files and screenshots of their endorsement in Publons in the appropriate Discussion Subjects. 

The final version of the manuscript will be subjected to a final Turnitin check and the report will be sent to the corresponding author. Further proofreading or editing by the authors might be requested in this stage.

Authors will not be able to withdraw the manuscript at this point. Changes of authorship may be possible at this point, but authors will need to provide strong reasons. 

Once the copyediting is done, authors will be emailed that their manuscript will move on to the Production stage.

PRODUCTION STAGE

The editors will conduct a final check, assign the manuscript's Volume, Issue and DOI and publish the PDF version of the manuscripts in-press. Page numbers will be given after an issue has been formally published and completed in February, June or October.

Only the editorial board can retract, remove or replace the manuscripts after formal publication.

PRE-PUBLICATION PUBLICITY

We always encourage authors to share their work with the scientific community through conference presentations and other discussions. We also understand that some of our authors may choose to share copies of their manuscripts by posting them online on a preprint server.

With online posting, we appreciate that information about the work is publicly available and may therefore be covered by media outlets or other venues and that authors may be contacted by and speak to reporters, but please note that early coverage can impact media interest in a paper at the time of publication.