Journal Article Submission and Review Process

1) Method of Receiving Articles

Articles are received through the following methods:

Through the journal’s email address: Until the official website of the journal is established and organized, authors may send the Word and PDF versions of their article to the following email address: Journal@shifa.edu.af
Submission to the journal office: Authors, especially faculty members of the university and those who have easy access to the office, may submit a copy and the Word and PDF versions of their articles to the editor-in-chief of the journal.
Through the journal’s website: After the official website of the journal is created and launched, all authors will submit their articles through the official website of the journal (the special portal for article submission) by completing the required forms and sending them to the journal secretariat for peer review and evaluation.

2) Criteria for Article Review/Evaluation

An initial review will be conducted through a checklist prepared on the basis of the procedures for literature review, formal review, and content review.

Sending articles to the editorial board according to their field and specialization.
Sharing the editorial board’s opinions with the authors.
Collecting the revised articles from the authors.
Re-reviewing the articles by the editor-in-chief and the editorial board.
Holding a meeting for the final decision.

A. Formal Review

Note: If articles require minor formal corrections, the formal review report will be communicated to the author together with the content review and literature review reports; however, if the article requires major and fundamental formal corrections, it will proceed to the content review stage after the formal errors are corrected; otherwise, the article will be rejected at the formal review stage.

The formal review process is as follows:

After receiving the articles, the editor-in-chief sends them to the editorial board according to their academic field and specialization so that they may review them formally in accordance with the formal review procedure (Appendix 1).
The formal review will be completed within a maximum of five working days.
After completion of the formal review, its report will be submitted to the editor-in-chief.
After reviewing the opinions and suggestions of the editorial board, the editor-in-chief sends them to the authors within a maximum of two working days.
The authors resend their revised articles to the journal within a maximum of three working days.
The revised corrections are reviewed again by the editor-in-chief and the members of the editorial board who had previously evaluated them.
A meeting is held under the supervision of the editor-in-chief for the final decision.

B. Content Review

After completion of the formal review, the editor-in-chief sends the articles to the editorial board according to their academic field and specialization so that they may review them in terms of content according to the content review procedure (Appendix 2).

The content review will be completed within a maximum of ten working days.
After completion of the content review, its report will be submitted to the editor-in-chief.
The editor-in-chief sends the opinions and suggestions of the editorial board to the authors within a maximum of two working days.
The authors resend their revised articles to the journal within a maximum of three working days.
The revised corrections are reviewed by the editor-in-chief and the assigned editorial board.
A meeting is held under the supervision of the editor-in-chief for the final decision.

C. Literary Review / Editorial Language Editing of the Article

After completion of the content review process, the editor-in-chief sends the articles to the editorial board according to their academic field and specialization so that they may review them linguistically according to the literary review procedure (Appendix 3).

The literary review will be completed within a maximum of five working days.
After completion of the literary review, its report will be submitted to the editor-in-chief.
The editor-in-chief reviews the opinions and suggestions of the editorial board and sends them to the authors within a maximum of two days.
The authors resend their revised articles to the journal within a maximum of two working days.
The revised corrections are reviewed by the editor-in-chief and the assigned editorial board.
A meeting is held under the supervision of the editor-in-chief for the final decision.

If the corrections are satisfactory to the editor-in-chief and the editorial board, then, after removing the name of the author/authors of the article, it will be sent for peer review to at least two reviewers.

Peer review in Shifa Scientific Journal is conducted in a double-blind review (both sides anonymous) manner.

Peer review will be completed within a maximum of ten working days, and the report will be sent to the editor-in-chief of the journal.

The editorial board, under the chairmanship of the editor-in-chief, evaluates the reviewers’ opinions and based on that, the following decisions will be made:

A) If the reviewers’ opinions and suggestions are identical or close to each other (above 80% agreement), subsequent decisions will be made on that basis.
B) If the reviewers’ opinions and suggestions are contradictory or their agreement is below 80%, this means that the selection of reviewers may not have been correct from a تخصصی point of view, and the article should also be sent to a third reviewer. In this case, the opinion of the third reviewer is compared with each of the previous reviewers, and the final decision will be made according to the matching opinions of two reviewers. If the opinion of the third reviewer is not identical or closely matched with either of the two previous reviewers, this means that the article is not within the scope of the journal and will be rejected.

Note: If section (B) occurs for more than one article, the selection of reviewers must be examined and revised.

After the review process is completed, a final meeting consisting of the editor-in-chief, members of the editorial board, and the managing director is held under the chairmanship of the editor-in-chief, and the final decision is made. Eligible articles that need revision are revised and sent to the managing director for approval for printing and publication; after the approval of the managing director, the articles are prepared for printing and publication. The final acceptance and printing of articles will be communicated to the authors within a maximum of 50 working days.

If the corrections are not satisfactory, the article will be rejected and communicated to the author in a letter within a maximum of 45 working days (the calendar count will be from the date of first receipt of the article).

Note: Articles may be reviewed simultaneously and in parallel from formal, content, and literary aspects. In this case, the editorial board members are categorized according to their academic field and specialization and assigned for simultaneous triple review, and the report of the triple review is submitted collectively to the editor-in-chief. If possible, this method should be adopted, as it is more time-efficient.