Journal Peer Review Process 

1. Preliminary Check

All submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by the journal’s Managing Editor (ME) for compliance with guidelines for preparation of articles, the journal’s scope, standard guidelines, quality, novelty, and adherence to ethical issues. Articles that do not comply with the guidelines will be sent back to the authors. The ME either routes the manuscript to the appropriate section editor (SE) or recommend it be sent to at least two reviewers, and an Editor-in-Chief (EiC) will be informed of this at the same time. This requires 1 or 2 days.

A basic quality check by an SE: The SE can reject the submission directly based on his or her own assessments or further solicit at least two reviewers to conduct a peer review.

2. Peer-review

AUDT adopts double-blind peer review where both authors and reviewers are unknown to each other. Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to at least two independent experts for peer-review.

AUDT editors will check to make sure there are no conflicts of interest before contacting reviewers, and will not consider those with competing interests. Reviewers are asked to declare any conflicts of interest before reviewing any submitted manuscript.

AUDT require that editorial staff or editors not be involved in processing their own academic work. The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board. Submissions will be assigned to at least two independent outside reviewers. The submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process. Decisions will be made by other Editorial Board Members who do not have a conflict of interest with the author.

Finding reviewers usually takes 2 or 3 days. Normally we request that comments are returned within 4 weeks and no later than 5 weeks. During the 4 to 5 weeks of the peer review process, reviewers will receive several reminders (once a week) sent by the ME.

The reviewers send their comments and recommendations to the SE. The SE evaluates the reviewers' comments along with the manuscript and makes a recommendation to an EiC. The EiC will make the final decision about whether the submission is directly rejected or not.

The manuscript may be:

Accept: Accepted for publication as is;

Minor Revision: Accepted for publication with minor changes, with no re-review necessary;

Major Revision: Accepted for publication after substantial revision and additional review, or

Reject: Rejected. The subject matter is unsuitable for publication in Advanced Ultrasound in Diagnosis and Therapy (AUDT).

3. Author Revision

In cases minor revisions/Major revisions are recommended, the author is usually requested to revise the paper before referring to the academic editor. The SE decides whether the revised submission needs to be sent back to the original reviewers for further review or not. The revised manuscript after major revision will be sent back to reviewers again. Normally (In general) we will allow no more than two rounds of major revision each manuscript. Any further revision needed will follow the decision of academic editor.

All reviewer comments should be responded point-by-point. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response or rebuttal.

Minor revision of manuscripts must be resubmitted within 3 days and major revision of manuscripts within 2 weeks.

4. Editor Decision

Final decision by EiCs: The ME will submit the SE-provisionally-accepted manuscript to an EiC for final decision. The EiC is expected to complete this within 3 days.

Pub-Express: Timely publishing is crucial to scholarly communications. As such, AUDT is serving a Pub-Express channel, by which a manuscript can receive a direct final decision by an EiC within 7 days upon being submitted. Authors can self-recommend their manuscripts to Pub-Express. So can either an EiC or SE.

5. Special Issue

AUDT is available in both online and print formats. It collaborates with the Ultrasound Society of the Chinese Medical Association and an official journal of the CMA Ultrasound Symposium. Each year, when the CMA Ultrasound Society organizes an academic meeting, the current issue of the journal is released as a special online and print issue. It's worth noting that all published articles undergo a thorough peer review process before being accepted for publication.

For manuscripts submitted to a Special Issue, the Issue Editors (Guest Editors) will make final decisions on behalf of the EiCs of the journal.

Updated on 22 November, 2023