The Generic SCIRP Peer Review Process visualizes this.



The flowchart of the Generic SCIRP Peer Review Process shows the review process as found in most of SCIRP’s journals. As there are far more than 200 journals (several of which were launched as early as 2008), Editors-in-Chief may follow different conventions when they work with the Editorial Board and the publisher’s Editorial Office of the journal. Note also that a few journals at SCIRP work successfully without an Editor-in-Chief, but all journals have an Editorial Board. Nevertheless, the process depicted in the flowchart is valid for most of SCIRP’s journals.

To emphasize again, the Editor taking care of a specific manuscript can be but does not have to be the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief can assign the manuscript to a member of the Editorial Board. Over time work is shared among more individuals with an extensive pool of expertise to be drawn from the entire Editorial Board. This is especially important where the journal scope spans a wide scientific area. If the Editor-in-Chief is temporarily not available, someone else from the Editorial Board can assign the manuscript to an Editor including himself/herself. It is also possible to appoint a qualified person from outside the Editorial Board as Editor for a manuscript. In any case, the Editor-in-Chief is always informed of all major issues, because the Editor-in-Chief carries the ultimate responsibility for all academic matters of the journal. In rare cases where a journal has no Editor-in-Chief, such information will go to that Editorial Board member who is currently most active in running the journal.

SCIRP is proud to have so many top-class academics on its Editorial Boards. SCIRP also understands that these academics have their primary duties to perform at their own institutions. In order to foster an efficient work environment for external academics, the publisher, therefore, has Editorial Assistants to provide as much help as possible to board members. Editorial Assistants play many important roles in the publishing process. For example, authors and readers often have many questions during the whole publishing process. For each journal, all such external and additionally internal correspondence is handled by its Editorial Assistant. If desired, the Editor-in-Chief can receive a CC email of all such correspondence. Furthermore, the Editorial Assistant can also take over the handling of the review process, leaving the decision-making to the Editor assigned to the manuscript. In this case the Editorial Assistant would also handle the correspondence with reviewers and with the Corresponding Author. An Editor whose duty is limited to core activities and decision making is named Academic Editor. An Editor additionally in charge of the correspondence with reviewers and with the Corresponding Author is named Handling Editor.

To repeat, the Editor assigned to a manuscript invariably bears the responsibility for all core activities and decisions in the review process of this manuscript. These core activities and decisions are:

• preliminary review
  • decision: accepted for review or
  • decision: pre-rejected
• reviewer selection
• writing the decision letter including
  • comments from reviewers
  • Editor's comments
  • Editor's decision about the next status of the manuscript:
    • decision: accepted or
    • decision: to be resubmitted or
    • decision: to be revised or
    • decision: rejected.

Please read more about the pre-publication and post-publication peer review process in the FAQ.

SCIRP asks authors to grant SCIRP a nonexclusive copyright. In this way authors continue to hold copyright with no restrictions. Based on its copyright SCIRP produces the final paper in SCIRP’s layout. This version is given to the public (and also back to the authors) under the Creative Commons license (CC BY or CC BY-NC). For this reason authors may also publish the final paper in any repository or on any website with a complete citation of the paper. When linking to their paper, authors should make use of the link that SCIRP has established with crossref.org. It is a pointer to the full text of the final paper. The URL provides a persistent link which will never break. This link has the form http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/YourPaperNumber.

Find more information on reader and author rights on the AboutUs page.

SCIRP is committed to maintaining high standards through a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies. Any infringements of professional ethical codes, such as plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, bogus claims of authorship, should be taken very seriously by the editors with zero tolerance.

SCIRP follows the Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and follows the COPE Flowcharts for Resolving Cases of Suspected Misconduct. SCIRP especially observes COPE's Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers. Editors at SCIRP follow COPE's Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Authors should be aware of a possible Conflict of Interest. In such a case authors can still take responsibility for the accuracy of their paper, but must inform the reader with an appropriate statement in the Acknowledgements.

SCIRP recognizes the importance of the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record. The historic record of published research articles shall remain available and unaltered as far as possible. However, circumstances may arise where a paper got published based on misconduct or honest error. Editors certainly guide the review process with much care, but it remains notoriously difficult to detect all occurrences of misconduct or error. For this reason it may become necessary to correct the scholarly record. The decision to alter the record should not be taken lightly. Action taken depends on the individual case and can take the form of
• Expression of Concern
• Correction (Erratum or Corrigendum)
• Retraction
• Removal
The purpose of the action is to correct the literature and to alert readers. It is not intended to punish the author(s).

The responsibility of guiding an investigation of misconduct or honest error is with the editor of the journal concerned. Authors and reviewers will take part in the investigation. The editor will decide on the form to best correct the scholarly record. Guiding principles are COPE's Retraction Guidelines and other accepted scholarly principles.

Minor errors that do not affect the integrity of the metadata or a reader's ability to understand an article and that do not involve a scientific error or omission are corrected such that the original article is replaced with the corrected version.

If final action originates from an author's request, SCIRP will help to process it without extra charges. If the measures taken (e.g. a retraction) were not initiated by the author(s) or are even taken without mutual agreement, the author(s) will not be financially compensated and Article Processing Charges (APC) will not be reimbursed.