Submission
submission of a manuscript implies that the work described has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a thesis) that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors agree to automatic transfer of the copyright to the publisher, that written permission of the copyright holder has been obtained by the authors for material used from other copyrighted sources (including tables, graphs, figures, and illustrations), and that any costs associated with obtaining this permission are the authors’ responsibility.
The manuscript will be published under the CC BY license, allowing any user, including the author, to share and redistribute the content in any medium or format, and to adapt it for any purpose, including commercially. Authors wishing to include figures or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
The double-blind refereeing, where anonymity is preserved both for the authors and the referees, has been adopted by the Journal of Aquatic Physiology and Biotechnology; therefore, authors are asked to remove their names, addresses and email from the first page of the submitted manuscript, and the acknowledgment section. This information should be submitted as one separate file. Submission of the manuscripts and all correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place through the journal website at https://japb.guilan.ac.ir/contacts?_action=loginForm.
Journal decision-making process
Typically, after a paper is submitted to a journal, a journal editor screens the manuscript and decides whether or not to send it for full peer review. Only after clearing the initial screening is the manuscript sent to one or more peer reviewers. Finally, journal editors or the journal’s editorial board consider the peer reviewers’ reports and make the final decision to accept or reject the manuscript for publication.
Initial screening
Given the large volume of manuscript submissions, the journal follows a policy of screening papers before sending them for full peer review. During the initial screening, journal editors mainly check the following:
One of the first items that editors will look at is the cover letter, and they may not get further than the cover letter if the study does not seem interesting enough. Therefore, it is imperative that authors craft a well-written cover letter that highlights the significance and strength of their research as well as provides a good reason why the manuscript is a good fit for the journal. Editors will then go through the abstract and may even skim through the introduction, figures, and tables, or other sections of the paper to determine whether the manuscript passes their quality threshold.
Benefits of initial screening:
Peer review
Once a manuscript clears the initial screening, it is sent for peer review.
There are three common types of peer review for journal publication:
Based on Double-blind peer review, a minimum of 2 peer reviewers (up to 6) is chosen for the peer review. Peer reviewers are ideally experts in their field. Journals usually build a pool of peer reviewers that have a good track record of producing high-quality reviews. Editors have to be careful to select reviewers who have sufficient subject matter expertise to do justice to the manuscript. Therefore, highly technical papers or papers from niche subject areas may take longer to review, because it may take editors some time to locate appropriate reviewers.
Some journals give authors the option of recommending preferred and non-preferred reviewers. Authors would do well to take advantage of this option if available as it can expedite the review process since it saves the journal time in looking for reviewers. Furthermore, studies have found that author-recommended peer reviewers tend to recommend acceptance more often than journal-recommended reviewers.
The peer review is completed once all the reviewers send the journal a detailed report with their comments on the manuscript and their recommendations. Typically, journals ask reviewers to complete their reviews within 3-4 weeks.
Final decision
The journal editor or editorial board considers the feedback provided by the peer reviewers and arrives at a decision. The following are the most common decisions that are made:
Notice: "According to the notified regulations for determining the cost of processing articles in open access scientific journals dated 2/1/1400 sent from the policy and planning office of research affairs of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology and approved by the Research and Technology Council of University of Guilan in the meeting dated 03/18/1400, it was decided that a fee will be charged for printing the article, and based on this, the cost of processing the full article in the magazine from the winter issue of 1401 will be 3 million Rials, which amount will be 3 million Rials after the arbitration and initial acceptance and before printing from The responsible author of the article will be received."