Peer Review Policy

The Researchcycles Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies (RJMS) employs a rigorous, transparent peer-review process to ensure the highest standards of scholarly quality and integrity.

Review Model

  • RJMS uses a double-blind peer review system: authors’ identities are hidden from reviewers and reviewers’ identities are not disclosed to authors.
  • Each submitted manuscript is evaluated by at least two independent expert reviewers, selected based on their expertise in the manuscript’s subject area and methodological approach.

Initial Editorial Screening

  • Upon submission, all manuscripts are screened by the Editor-in-Chief or an assigned handling editor for scope fit, originality, ethical compliance, and plagiarism check.
  • Manuscripts that fail to meet these criteria (e.g., outside the journal’s scope, insufficient originality, major methodological flaws) are desk-rejected without external review.

Reviewers’ Responsibilities

  • Reviewers provide objective, constructive, and confidential evaluations of the manuscripts.
  • They declare any conflict of interest, must not review manuscripts where such conflicts exist, and should alert the editor to any issues of ethics, duplication, or misconduct.
  • Reviewers must base their recommendations on scholarly merit, clarity, methodological soundness, and relevance to the journal’s audience.

Editorial Decisions

  • Editors consider the reviewers’ reports alongside the journal’s scope and policy, and take the final decision: accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject.
  • The peer-review outcome is independent of any publication fee or author’s financial status.

Revisions and Publication

  • If revisions are requested, authors are given clear guidance and a timeline to submit changes.
  • After acceptance, articles are assigned a DOI and published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license.

Misconduct and Ethics

  • In the event of suspected misconduct (e.g., plagiarism, fabrication of data, redundant publication, improper authorship), RJMS follows the flow-charts and guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to investigate and take appropriate corrective action (correction, expression of concern, retraction).

Transparency

  • RJMS publishes the submission date, acceptance date, and publication date for each accepted article.
  • Any exceptions to the standard review process (e.g., invited articles, editorial commentary) are clearly labeled and described.

By submitting to RJMS, authors acknowledge that their manuscript will undergo this peer review process and agree to abide by the journal’s policies.