Peer Review Policy

Manuscript review process

The order of reviewing manuscripts of articles in the Moldovan Journal of Health Sciences

The review (expert evaluation) of manuscripts of scientific articles is carried out in order to maintain a high scientific and theoretical level of Moldovan Journal of Health Sciences (MJHS) and to select the most valuable and relevant scientific papers.
The Moldovan Journal of Health Sciences (MJHS) evaluates manuscripts according to the “Double-blind peer-review” model. The correct selection of a group of colleagues improves the outcome of the process. The reviewer’s identity is not disclosed to the author(s) of the manuscript. The reviewer’s anonymity allows for objective evaluation of the manuscript by the reviewers and also excludes any authors influence on the reviewers comments. The reviewers do not know the name of the author(s), but the opinions are transmitted to the Editorial Board for examination, which in turn communicates them to the author.
The scientific articles that come to the editorial board are the primary control of the editorial board regarding the compliance of the journal profile, completeness and compliance with the requirements of the manuscript requirements set forth on the site.
The manuscript received for the publication is treated as a confidential document. The articles must not be shown to other parties or discussed with them except those authorized by the editor.
The primary expert review of a scientific article is done by the editor-in-chief or deputy editor-in-chief. The article is subject to bibliographic editing and anti-plagiarism.
The Editor-in-Chief (or Deputy Editor-in-Chief) selects at least two independent reviewers for each manuscript. Reviewers must be external to the MJHS editorial team, must not be authors or otherwise involved in the manuscript, and must have the relevant experience and expertise to provide a full and cogent review.
Reviewers should be recognised specialists in the subject matter of the submitted manuscript and have publications in this field of research, preferably during the last five years.
A copy of the title and abstract is made available to reviewers to assist them in deciding whether they have the pertinent experience to review the article. If they accept the assignment to review, they will receive original article and further details. Each reviewer has the right to refuse a review if there is an explicit conflict of interest, which is reflected in the perception and interpretation of the manuscript materials.
During the reviewing process the identities of the both authors and reviewers are kept hidden to ensure an unbiased evaluation.
Reviewers are allocated 4 weeks for evaluation of submitted article. An e-mail Letter of Reminder is sent after 3 weeks by the Editor-in-Chief (or deputy Editor-in-Chief) if the review has not been returned.
When the reviews are returned to the editorial office they are reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief (or deputy Editor-in-Chief), who will then make a recommendation.
Each reviewer may suggest one of the following recommendations:
- “Accepted for publication” – no changes are required, or a limited number of linguistic or stylistic corrections are needed;
- “Accepted with Minor Revision” – some changes are required in order to make the manuscript clearer, better organized or stronger, but hypotheses, data, arguments and conclusions remain generally unchallenged;
- “Accepted with Major Revision” – some changes that concern hypotheses, data, arguments or conclusions are required, but the changes may undermine the overall aim of the manuscript;
- “Rejected” – no reasonable number of changes would make the manuscript acceptable for publication.

The Editor-in-Chief will then make a final decision based on Reviewer’s recommendation - “Accepted for publication”, “Accepted with Minor Revision”, “ Accepted with Major Revision ” or “Rejected”.

The corresponding author is contacted via e-mail with the decision and reviewers’ reports. The reviewers are informed of the decision and are sent a copy of the other reviewers’ reports for their information.
Revised articles follow a similar procedure. Upon resubmission, the Editor-in-Chief (or deputy Editor-in-Chief) evaluates the revision and decides whether it can be accepted or whether it is to be sent to the same external reviewers who undertook the initial evaluation. Reviewers are allocated a maximum of 2 weeks for the second review of resubmitted articles.

Confidentiality. Editors and Reviewers receive unpublished work, which must be treated as confidential until published. They should destroy all electronic and printed copies of the draft article and reviewer report once they have received confirmation that their reports have been received by the publishing manager (in case we can’t open the report files you send us). Reviewers must not disclose to others which articles they have reviewed; nor are they to share those articles with any other person.

Reviewers provide feedback, criticism, and suggestions for improvement. Authors address feedback and make necessary revisions before resubmitting the manuscript.

Average peer-review time: 21-30 days;
Average publication time: 90 days.

Peer review is a quality control process where experts in a specific field evaluate scholarly research to ensure its validity, quality, and originality before publication. It serves as the foundation for integrity in academic literature, with peers assessing the methodology, ethics, and significance of research to advise journal editors on whether to accept, reject, or request revisions.

Peer review guidelines

Steps to perform peer review of an article (recommendations for reviewers)

analyze the manuscript objectively, in accordance with quality standards, (Evaluation form)
help the author improve the manuscript quality by means of the Editorial Board,
identify relevant published works that have not been cited by the author(s) and warn about a substantially similar content to the work under review,
treat any manuscript submitted for review as a confidential document; respect confidentiality of valuable information or ideas revealed in the peer review process and must not use them for personal purposes,
keep confidentiality and must not personally use the valuable information or ideas revealed during the review process,
refuse to review manuscripts, in case of suspicion of conflict of interest, regarding the subject being investigated,
help the editor to make decisions about the manuscript acceptance for publication. The functions of MJHS can be summarized as follows: (1) to prioritize scientists, (2) to make original results public, (3) to ensure quality assurance, (4) to ensure the archiving of research. Submitted manuscripts, which are found to contain plagiarized text, are rejected. The responsibility for the originality and statements stated in the article rests entirely with the author. In case of plagiarism, the responsibility lies exclusively with the perpetrator of the plagiarism.

Others

DOI, UDC, XML

The Digital Objective Identifier (DOI) is provided by CrossRef (www.crossref.org) with the support of Information Society Development Institute (www.idsi.md) of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) format is provided by Information Society Development Institute (www.idsi.md) of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova.

The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) code is provided by the Scientific Medical Library of Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy of the Republic of Moldova (www.library.usmf.md).

Equal rights guarantee

The Editorial Board evaluates the manuscripts for their intellectual content without any regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship or political philosophy of the authors.

The Moldovan Journal of Health Sciences requires the authors to provide a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study, and that the study conforms to recognized standards, for example: Declaration of Helsinki or European Medicines Agency Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice.

The ethics and malpractice guidelines of the journal are described in the Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement and based on:

Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors made up by the Committee on Publication Ethics (www.publicationethics.org).
World Association of Medical Editors principles (www.wame.org).
Uniform Manuscript Requirements of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (www.icmje.org).
National Ethics Committee Standards of the Republic of Moldova (http://lex.justice.md/md/362783/).

The Moldovan Journal of Health Sciences follows the COPE, WAME and ICMJE recommendations

Open access statement

Moldovan Journal of Health Sciences (MJHS) is committed to real and immediate open access for scientific and academic work, that supports the Open Access Policy based on Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, released June 20, 2003.

All of our articles are free to access immediately from the date of publication. We do not charge our authors any fees for publication or processing, nor do we charge readers to download articles.

MJHS is free to all at any time and in perpetuity. Thus, we depend upon the financial underwriting provided to the authors by the Nicolae Testemițanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, the goodwill of our editorial team, and the continuing support of our network of peer reviewers.

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 as long as they cite the source. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.

Complaints, appeals, corrections and retractions

Complaints about editorial decisions, peer review, publication ethics, conflicts of interest, or published content should be sent to editor.mjhs@usmf.md. The editorial office will acknowledge and investigate each complaint confidentially, following applicable Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidance. Complaints involving the editor-in-chief will be referred to the publisher.

Authors may appeal an editorial decision by writing to editor.mjhs@usmf.md with the reasons and supporting information. Appeals are reviewed by the editor-in-chief or a delegated editor who was not involved in the original decision. The outcome of an appeal will be communicated in writing.

When a published article contains a confirmed error or issue affecting its reliability, MJHS will publish a correction, expression of concern, or retraction notice as appropriate, link the notice to the original article, and keep the original record available with its status clearly marked. The journal follows relevant COPE guidance for these notices.