DUTIES OF REVIEWERS

Contribution to the decision to publish

The reviewer has a duty to assist the Editor-in-Chief in the decision to publish. The reviewer should agree to review only those manuscripts for which he/she has adequate academic expertise and sufficient time to be able to provide a review within a reasonable timeframe.

Conflict of interest

Reviewers are required to inform the Editor-in-Chief of any possible conflicts of interest. If they acknowledge authorship of a text, they are required to disclose in particular any direct business, business or other close personal/scientific relationship with the submitting author.

Without the written consent of the author, the unpublished text may not be used in the reviewer's own research.

Confidentiality and impartiality

The reviewer is obliged to respect the confidentiality of the entire review process. All reviews represent an objective and constructive assessment of the reviewed text. Reviewers should identify published work that has not been cited by the author, and report to the Editor-in-Chief any similarities detected with published work by other authors.

Review questionnaire

Reviewers use the review questionnaire provided to them by the Editorial Team. The review questionnaire is available at the link: https://czasopisma.uksw.edu.pl/pliki/priel/peer_review.docx

Review process

In the first stage of the reviewing process of a text submitted for publication in the Polish Review of International and European Law, the Editorial Board assesses whether the text meets the requirements for the submitted texts and whether it is in line with the subject matter of the journal.  Texts that do not meet these conditions are returned to the authors.

Next, texts accepted by the Editorial Board are reviewed by two scientists not affiliated with the same institution as the author in a double blind review system: reviewers and the author do not know each other; in addition, they come from different scientific or research centers. Reviewers are also required to declare a possible conflict of interest.

Reviewers receive a review questionnaire and are asked to express a clear opinion as to whether the manuscript is: (a) accepted; (b) conditionally accepted; or (c) not accepted.

Submission of a review is made by filling out the review questionnaire provided. Evaluation of the text is carried out by responding to the substantive requirements listed in the review questionnaire.

Reviewers are required to formulate their opinion based on the following criteria:

- originality of the topic;

- relevance of the topic;

- the relationship of the topic to the text;

- readability and logic of the argument, coherence and quality of the scientific argumentation;

- the extent of the research;

- the value and nature of the conclusions;

- the nature of the text (descriptive or analytical);

- assessment of the quality of the scientific workshop (the level of use of legal sources, case law, scientific literature).

The reviewer assesses separately whether, to his knowledge, the text in whole or in part constitutes self-plagiarism or plagiarism or is the result of other unethical behaviour on the part of the author.

If the work is accepted “conditionally”, the Reviewer recommends which parts of the text and how they should be modified.

If the manuscript is assessed negatively by one reviewer and conditionally accepted by a second reviewer, the manuscript is not published and is returned to the author, stating the reason.

If the manuscript is assessed negatively by one reviewer and positively by the other, the Editors appoint a third reviewer to write a separate review. The third Reviewer shall not be made available to previous reviews. The third review is conclusive.

Authors are required to comply with the Reviewer's comments. The Author's corrected text is referred again to the Reviewer if he/she has stipulated that he/she would like to see the corrected text. If the Author does not agree with the Reviewer's comments, he/she may submit his/her justified comments to the Editor. The Editorial Board makes the final decision on whether to accept the author's arguments or whether further changes are necessary in accordance with the Reviewer's comments.

The reviewer should send the review within the deadline agreed upon with the Editor. The review process takes 25 to 35 days.

The reviewer's decision is communicated to the author immediately, no later than within 7 days.