Peer-Review Process
Manuscripts in World Journal of Internal Medicine and Surgery (wjims) are subject to a two-part review process. The first part is the editorial review, whereby a member of the editorial team determines whether or not the article will be sent to peer review based on the quality of the research, relevancy to journals readership, the contribution of the work to the existing literature, quality of the writing, and timeliness of the work. During this review, the Editorial manager assesses the manuscript for compliance with journal authorship guidelines, including but not limited to word count and number of figures and tables. Editorial review decisions are typically made within 1 week of manuscript submission and authors will be notified if their articles are not sent to the peer review.
The second part of the review process is a single-blinded peer review, whereby the identity of the authors is known to the reviewers, but the identity of the reviewers is not disclosed to the authors. Peer reviewers are asked to review the article in great detail and provide comments to the authors using the “track changes” function in Microsoft Word. Peer reviewers also complete a reviewer form and are asked to make a publication recommendation based on relevancy, originality, quality of research, quality of writing, and influence of bias. The editorial team makes a final publication decision based on the peer-review recommendations. Decisions resulting from the second part of the process are usually made within 2 weeks of manuscript submission but may be extended in unusual circumstances.
The exceptions to this peer-review process are Letters to the Editor, Perspectives, which undergo editorial review only.
All submissions are subject to applicable provisions of ICMJE and the Committee on Publication Ethics and publication may be withdrawn or denied at any time consistent with those provisions. Members of the editorial team rescue themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration.