Instructions for reviewers

All submitted manuscripts are subjected to a review process that involves assessing the manuscript’s compliance with the technical instructions for authors and the method of double anonymous review of papers (the "double-blind peer review method"). Before the paper is sent to the reviewers, the editorial board assesses whether it is suitable for publication in the journal, taking into account its form and the journal's thematic scope.

The purpose of the peer review is to assist in the process of making an editorial decision on accepting or rejecting the received manuscript for publication and to assist the author in improving the quality of the paper through the reviewer’s suggestions. Reviewers are selected exclusively on the basis of their level of expertise on the topic of the paper and whether they have the relevant knowledge for paper evaluation. In order to prevent a conflict of interest, the reviewer and the author(s) must not come from the same institution. The complete procedure, from application to acceptance/rejection of the manuscript, can be followed on the Journal of Criminology and Criminal Law website.

In the case of a first-time submission of a review for the Journal of Criminology and Criminal Law, the reviewer must create a user account by selecting the registration option. Each time the reviewer accesses this section, he logs in with his created username and password. In addition to the basic information about himself, the reviewer should also fill in the field "areas of expertise", where he can enter up to 10 terms of up to five words. This assists editors in the process of selecting reviewers and assigning papers. The "my reviews" option will be available to the reviewer, with the titles of the papers and review statuses with dates (review accepted, review submitted, additional review submitted). Within each assigned review, the reviewer has the option to download the assigned paper and fill out the review form on the site.

The following aspects of the manuscript are evaluated by the reviewer: whether it corresponds to the thematic scope of the Journal of Criminology and Criminal Law; the adequacy of the title, abstract, and keywords; the structure; the subject of the research; the scientific methods used; the presented results; the manuscript's language and style; and the relevance of the used literature. The reviewer can repeat the same procedure, depending on the extent of the requested changes, after the author has submitted the adjusted manuscript.