"Peer review" as a judgment on an academic work may affect the whole work and life an academic person and is of the utmost goal of managing a journal.

Rules of External Peer Review:

• All submitted manuscripts are subjected to the external peer review and editorial approval.
• Articles will be sent to at least 3 independent reviewers in the related field.
• Normally, the reviewers are blinded to the authors' identities and their affiliations while the associate editors have full access to them.
• Authors are usually notified within 2-3 months about the acceptability of their manuscript.
• Reviewers are selected based on their expertise within the topic area of the submission, and their purpose is to assist the authors and the journal by providing a critical review of the manuscript. To apply be a reviewer in one the Kowsar journals please submit your request with your resume at www.publisher.support . The editorial board of the journal will review your resume and will be in contact with you.
• After receiving the reviewers’ comments, authors are requested to send the revised article and a copy of their reply to the reviewers including the comment and explaining the replies to the questions and the changes made to the revised version. The communication regarding a specific manuscript will be done only between the journal and the designated corresponding author.

Responsibility for the Reviewers

Based on the agreement with our reviewers, they are committed to these regulations:

• Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
• Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect their comments and decision.
• Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
• Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
• Reviewers should also call to the Editor in Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
• Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Different Types of Peer Review in Kowsar Journals

There are three types of "Peer Review" among the Kowsar Journals:

1. Double-blind Peer Review System: Neither Reviewer nor author knows each other. In This system, a blind PDF will be sent to the reviewer and a reviewer is only able to see the text of the manuscript without knowing the names or affiliations.
2. Open Peer Review: Readers and authors of the manuscript are able to see and read the reviewer's comments.

We believe that publishing our peer review reports could make a transparent and clear environment for all our efforts within a journal, but not all reviewers tend to publish their comments. 

Schema of Peer Review Process in Kowsar Journals

Please see below diagram which shows the review process.

What is "Open Peer Review" process?

An "Open Peer Review" process is making the details of all review process (including reviewers, associate editors, and EICs comments) as "Public" as it is agreed by EIC, Authors, and reviewers. 

Types of reviewers in Open Peer review

1. Signed-Reviewers: These reviewers agree to be declared with their names and affiliations in the public journal website.
2. Anonymous-Reviewers: This type of reviewers are anonymous for the public but known for EIC while only their comments will be publicly available.

Advantages of "Open Peer Review" process

1. More transparency, constructiveness and tactful comments of the peer review process: leads to an increase in the quality of reviews
2. More motivations for all involved roles in the review process 
3. Authors' satisfactions from the review process: Increases honesty between authors and reviewers
4. Education of both authors and new students
5. Prevents reviewers from following their individual agendas and leading to the detection of reviewers' conflicts of interests

The project of "Open Peer Review" will be started from 1 Sep 2019 in all of Kowsar journals. 

A model of Peer Review process and contents of Open Peer Review Report

Here you may find a sample model of open peer review process in Kowsar journals.