Peer Review Policy

4.Peer Review for Papers Submitted by the Journals’ Editorial Team Member (Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board/Guest Editor/etc.) or for a Special Issue

1.Peer Review Process

All submissions to the journal are initially reviewed by one of the Editors. At this stage manuscripts may be rejected without peer review if it is felt that they are not of high enough quality, priority, or relevance to the journal. This fast rejection process means that authors are given a quick decision and do not need to wait for the review process.

Manuscripts that are not instantly rejected are sent out for double-anonymized peer review, usually to at least two independent reviewers. Based on the feedback from these reviewers and the Editors' judgment, a decision is given on the manuscript.

Forum Multimedia Publishing follows COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers and employs "double anonymized" reviewing, in which the referees remain anonymous to the author(s) throughout and following the refereeing process, while the identity of the author(s) is likewise unknown to the reviewers.

Please note：

Manuscripts with contents outside the scope of the journal will not be considered for review.
Manuscripts will usually be refereed by two experts as suggested by the editorial board. Editors will have the option of seeking additional reviews when needed. Authors will be informed when editors decide further review is required.
All publication decisions are made by the journals' Editor-in-Chief based on the peer review or by another Editorial Board/Guest Editor approved by the Editor-in-Chief. Authors of papers that are not accepted are notified promptly.
Our peer review process is confidential. All submitted manuscripts are treated as confidential documents.
Editors, reviewers, and editorial staff involved in the review process should disclose conflicts of interest resulting from direct competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with any of the authors or the article topic, and remove oneself from cases in which such conflicts preclude an objective evaluation.
Privileged information or ideas that are obtained through peer review must not be used for competitive gain.

If a paper is not acceptable in its present form, we will pass on suggestions for revisions to the author.

2.Peer Review Confidentiality

The existence of a manuscript under review should not be revealed to anyone other than the peer reviewers and editorial staff. Peer reviewers are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to the manuscripts they review and must not divulge any information about a specific manuscript or its content to any other person or organisation without prior permission from the journal’s editors.

Forum Multimedia Publishing will also systematically collect and analyze information from submitted manuscripts to help improve the quality of the editorial or peer review processes. Therefore, we expect all peer reviewers as well as authors to respect and allow the use of anonymized information for research purposes. Final decisions regarding the publication of manuscripts are made by the editor.

Reviewers should not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author. Reviewers should notify The Forum Multimedia Publishing if they have any conflict of interest regarding a specific manuscript and should not review the article.

3.Peer Review Flowchart

The journal editor passes the submitted manuscripts to the Editor-in-Chief or another Editorial Board/Guest Editor approved by the Editor-in-Chief for pre-check.
Depending on the topic of the submitted manuscript, the journal editor passes the article to reviewers with related expertise.
The reviewers agree to review the manuscript or recommend other reviewers to the related expertise.
The external experts make recommendations (This stage may not occur once).
Authors make revisions according to the recommendations (This stage may not occur once).
The Editor-in-Chief or another Editorial Board/Guest Editor approved by the Editor-in-Chief makes a decision on the manuscript, for which there are four options: accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject.

More information about Editorial Process.

4.Peer Review for Papers Submitted by the Journals’ Editorial Team Member (Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board/Guest Editor/etc.) or for a Special Issue

Editorials, news and interview articles written by the journal's editors do not undergo external peer review. However, articles written by the editors that report original research, analysis or other content will be subject to independent peer-reviewed.

To ensure impartiality in decision-making and to avoid any potential conflict of interest, authors serving on the Journal's editorial board will not be involved in any editorial processing of manuscripts (including review, editing, and final decisions). The editors will also not be involved in decision-making for manuscripts written by family members or colleagues, or related to products or services in which the editors have an interest or other perceived conflicts of interest. Any such submissions are subject to all the regular procedures of the journal, and peer review is independent of the editors involved and their research teams. For example, articles from the Editor-in-Chief will be assigned to an Associate Editor-in-Chief or, in the absence of an Associate Editor-in-Chief, to an Editorial Board with relevant expertise (who does not have any conflicts of interest with the Editor-in-Chief). After receiving review comments from external reviewers, the manuscript will be returned to the Associate Editor-in-Chief or a member of the Editorial Board (with whom the Editor-in-Chief does not have any conflicts of interest) for a final decision.

Additionally, if the manuscript is accepted, we will also ask the authors to indicate in a footnote the appropriate conflict of interest (e.g., relationship to the journal, whether sponsorship is included, etc.). Here is an example: XXX is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal, and XXX declares no conflict of interest by not participating in the peer review process. Author XXX is responsible for all content of the manuscript.