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Peer Review Process

Peer review is the scrutiny of the author's scholarly research and other experts in the same field to check the work's validity and evaluate its suitability for publication. The Online Journal of Animal and Feed Research follows a double-blind peer-reviewing procedure by at least 2 reviewers who are not part of the journal’s editorial staff and mostly suggested by section editors. This method of review provides a fair, unbiased, independent, critical assessment of the submissions and more effectively conveys the assessment of expert reviewers to authors, readers, and other interested parties (upon corresponding author's agreement).

Peer review is intended to improve the accuracy, clarity, and completeness of published manuscripts and also help editors decide which manuscripts are proper to publish. Reviewers do not guarantee manuscript quality and scientific misconduct but advise editors on how and under which conditions a manuscript might be improved and on its priority for publication in that journal. In addition to their comments for the authors, reviewers are asked whether the research is sound and coherent, the topic interesting, and the writing of acceptable quality. Where possible, the final decision is made on the basis that peer reviewers are in accordance with one another, or that at least there is no strong dissenting view. In cases, there is strong disagreement, either among the peer review or between the authors and the peer reviewers, advice is sought from an editorial board member or a researcher of similar standing.

Editors are not required to send all manuscripts out for review. They may immediately return or decline some manuscripts to authors without external review, to allow authors to submit the manuscript to another journal without delay.

Editors publish statistics on a regular basis describing their journal’s review process, number of submissions, acceptance rate, average time from submission to the first and final decisions, and article acceptance to final publication (for example see OJAFR archive).

Online Journal of Animal and Feed Research accept submissions via both the Scienceline Online Submission Form and Journal's Online Submission Form. The submitted manuscript must be accompanied by a cover letter in which the authors should state why the manuscript should be considered and evaluated by the OJAFR editorial policies and declare if they have any competing interests. The authors of received manuscripts are also asked to submit a copyright declaration of competing interests as part of their manuscript.

 The main features of the current OJAFR peer-review process are:

  • all decisions are made by editors who are active researchers.
  • we do not artificially limit the number of articles we publish or have a set acceptance rate.
  • editors discuss with reviewers about reviews with "major revision results" before reaching a decision on a manuscript; extra experiments are only requested if they are essential and can be completed within about two months.
  • the decision letter is sent to the author after peer review, and the accepted manuscripts are published if the authors respond.

Our aim is to make peer review faster and fairer, especially for clinical research (by reducing rounds of revision and requesting extra experiments if required).


Review/Decisions/Processing

Firstly, all manuscripts will be checked by one of the plagiarism finding tools (iThenticate, and or ​Turnitin). A double-blind reviewing model is used by OJAFR for non-plagiarized papers. The manuscript is edited by the English language editor and checked by at least 2 reviewers mostly suggested by section editors. Manuscripts that are judged to be of insufficient quality or unlikely to be competitive enough for publication are returned to the authors at the initial stage.

We always try to avoid delays in the reviewing process, but it relies on the time and cooperation of the referees that works without any remuneration, hence, it may take 2 weeks to 2 months. One unfavorable review means that the paper will not be published and possible decisions are: accept as is, minor revision, major revision, or reject.  The corresponding authors should submit back their revisions within 14 days in the case of minor revision, or 30 days in the case of major revision

To submit a revision please click here, fill out the form, and mark "Revised", mention the article code (for example OJAFR-1108), attach the revision (MS word) and continue submission. Manuscripts with significant results are typically reviewed and published at the highest priority. After review and editing the article, a final formatted proof is sent to the corresponding author once again to apply all suggested corrections during the article process. The editor who received the final revisions from the corresponding authors shall not be hold responsible for any mistakes shown in the final publication.


Reviewers' Ethical Responsibilities and Duties

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf)

  1. Reviewers contribute to editorial decisions by validating a newly submitted author’s research to confirm its suitability for publication
  2. Reviewers should generally treat authors and their work as they would like to be treated themselves and observe good reviewing etiquette.
  3. Reviewers should provide comments in time that will help editors to make a decision on whether the submitted manuscript is to be published or not.
  4. Reviewers comments on each submitted manuscript should be technical, professional, and objective. They should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
  5. Reviewers who feel unqualified to review the submitted manuscript or they are unable to a prompt review should notify the editor.
  6. Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, which they are invited to review. They must not share the review or any information about the paper with anyone or contact the authors directly without permission from the editor.
  7. If there was a need to discuss with colleagues or co-reviewing exercises, the reviewer should first notify the editor in order to ensure that confidentiality is observed or it is allowed.
  8. Reviewer is not allowed to use unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript unless written consent is obtained from the author.
  9. Reviewer must keep ideas and novel information obtained through peer review confidential and not used for personal advantage.
  10. Reviewer should notify the editor by the relevant comments, if there were any ethical issues in the paper, including any substantial overlap with other published papers.
  11. Reviewers should be unbiased experts and do not criticize the author personally that is inappropriate.
  12. Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions.
  13. In case of potential conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers, reviewers should consult the editor.
  14. Any suggestion by a reviewer in the manuscript to cite his/her published work is allowed only per genuine scientific reasons and not to increase the reviewer’s citation index.
  15. Check that there is no conflict of interest in referee duties. In case of discrepancy, it will be acted according to the COPE guidelines
  16. When the request for review is sent to the reviewer, the reviewer must act according to the description of the COPE guidelines
  17. When the journal editors suspect FABRICATED DATA, the publication acts according to the description of COPE guidelines
  18. If the journal editors suspects a referee during the reviewing process, it will act according to COPE guidelines. 
  19. If the journal editors recognise potential manipulation of the peer review process, the journal or publisher will act according to COPE guidelines.

Authors' Ethical Responsibilities and Duties

(http://publicationethics.org/files/International standards_authors_for website_11_Nov_2011.pdf)

  1. Manuscripts must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal or any other publisher.
  2. Manuscripts must be submitted only in English and should be written according to sound grammar and proper terminology.
  3. The submitting corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript article's publication has been approved by all the other coauthors.
  4. In order to sustain the peer review system, authors have an obligation to participate in peer-review process to evaluate manuscripts from others. 
  5. It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the manuscripts emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the necessary approval of the institution.
  6. It is a condition for submission of a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
  7. Authors are requested to clearly identify who provided financial support for the conduct of research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the founder/ sponsor in any part of the work.
  8. A copy right release form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorship, prior to the acceptance of the manuscript, by all authors, for publication to be legally responsible for the Journal ethics and privacy policy.
  9. Under open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.
  10. All authors have agreed to allow the corresponding author to serve as the correspondent with the editorial office, to review the edited manuscript and proof.
  11. When an author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, authors should promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript. All authors must know that that the submitted manuscripts under review or published with OJAFR are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. 
  12. All authors must know that the submitted manuscripts under review or published in OJAFR are subjected to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics.
  13. All authors must ensure that they have read the submission final checklist before being submitted. For more details kindly see the instructions for authors of each journal available here.
  14. For more information about Authors' Ethical Responsibilities please visit Authorship and Authors' Responsibilities.


Plagiarism
There is an instant policy towards plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) in our journals. Manuscripts are screened for plagiarism by one of the plagiarism finding tools (iThenticatePlagScan and or ​Docol©c), before or during publication, and if found they will be rejected at any stage of processing.

Declaration

After manuscript accepted for publication, a declaration form will be sent to the corresponding author who that is responsible to coauthors' agreements to publication of submitted work in OJAFR after any amendments arising from the peer review.

Date of issue

All accepted articles are published bimonthly around 25th of January, March, May, July, September and November, each year in full text on the Internet.

Publication charges
No submission and peer-reviewing charges are required. However, the publication costs are covered through article processing charges (APCs). There is a modest APC of 180 Euro(€) editor fee for the processing of each primary accepted paper (1000-4000 words) to encourage high-quality submissions. APCs are only charged for articles that pass the pre-publication checks. A surcharge will be placed on any article that is over 4000 words in length to cover the additional processing costs. We encourage the authors to submit manuscript with no more than 4000 words (not including Abstract, Methods, References and figure legends). Payment can be made by credit card, bank transfer, money order or check. Instruction for payment is sent during publication process as soon as manuscript is accepted. Meanwhile, this journal encourages the academic institutions in low-income countries to publish high quality scientific results, free of charges. If the authors have decided to withdraw the accepted manuscript while they have received one of the reviewed or edited versions of manuscript from the journal, they will be banned from the submission for a period of 5 years.

Word count Fee*
1000-4000 words
€180
over 4000 words
€280
* The fees are valid until 30th December 2024.


The Waiver policy
The publication fee will be fully waived for invited authors, authors of hot papers, and corresponding authors who are active editorial board members of the Online Journal of Animal and Feed Research. The Journal will consider requests to waive the fee partially, for cases of financial hardship (for high quality manuscripts and upon acceptance for publication). Requests for waiver of the submission fee must be submitted via individual cover letter by the corresponding author and cosigned by an appropriate institutional official to verify that no institutional or grant funds are available for the payment of the fee. Letters including the manuscript title and manuscript ID number should be sent to: editors[at]ojafr.com. It is expected that waiver requests will be processed and authors will be notified within two business day.


Withdrawal policy
If the authors have decided to withdraw the accepted manuscript while they have received one of the reviewed or edited versions of manuscript from the journal, they will be banned from the submission for a period of 5 years.

The OA policy
Online Journal of Animal and Feed Research is an Open Access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of Open Access.

For more information please visit OJAFR's Open Access Policy.




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Submission Preparation Checklist 

Authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to the following guidelines: 

  • -The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in -Comments to the Editor).    

  • -The submission file is in Microsoft Word, RTF, or PDF document file format.    

  • -Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.    

  • -The text is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font; and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.    

  • -The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.  

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(Revised on 08 June 2024)

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Related links

Publication Ethics

Appeals and Complaints

Policies

Open Access

Authorship and Authors' Responsibilities


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