As the quality of the published papers is our main concern, all submitted works are subject to a three-stage review procedure with the guidelines of the Minister of Science and Higher Education contained in Good Practices in Scientific Reviewing Procedures.
The preliminary stage, at the editor’s level, is comprised of a general evaluation of compliance of the proposed paper with the journal’s profile and establishing whether the computer file submitted by its author fulfills the anonymity criteria.
At the second stage, the editorial team assesses the substantive quality of the manuscript and decides whether to send the manuscript for review or to reject it—possibly at this stage, the author may be asked to introduce some corrections. The editors will also assess whether the manuscript is sufficiently original and interesting. If not, the manuscript may be rejected without further review.
At the third stage, the text is subject to a double-blind peer review.
The final decision concerning the text’s publication in CTO is made by the editor-in-chief.
Scientific articles are available to two different reviewers who are specialists in their field. The editors make sure that the reviewer is not a person who has a conflict of interests with the author, in which:
• direct legal connection (kinship, legal relationships)
• acceptance relationship
• direct scientific cooperation in the last two years of preparation.
For this purpose, the reviewer, among others, complete the appropriate declaration. Scientific articles are reviewed confidentially and anonymously (double-blind review process).
The suggested time for publishing and making a significant scientific article available to the journal's editorial office by the reviewer is 30 days.
The following reviewing principles are observed:
In the review’s conclusion, each reviewer selects one of the following options:
In the case of receiving one negative conclusion, the text is sent to the third reviewer. In case of receiving two negative reviews, the text is not accepted.
Regardless of the reviewers’ conclusions, the author is made aware of their content and may respond to them.
If authors disagree with some reviewers’ comments, they may inform the editorial office about this. The editors will then carefully consider the author’s opinion and respond to it. If it is necessary to introduce some corrections, and the author will be asked to submit a revised manuscript within the prescribed period with the amendments marked in red font. At this point, the editors will check if the author took note of the reviewers’ comments. If the author has not introduced the recommended corrections and has not responded to them or has not sufficiently rebutted the reviewers’ comments, the manuscript will be rejected.