Peer Review Process

In order to ensure a high standard of publication, all papers submitted to Journal of Power, Energy, and Control (PEC) will go through peer review prior to acceptance for publication. The review process ensures papers are original, significant, novel and well presented.

Pre-check

Immediately after submission, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief or Managing Editor will perform the technical pre-check to assess:

• Overall suitability of the manuscript to the journal/section/Special Issue;
• Manuscript adherence to high-quality research and ethical standards;
• Standards of rigor to qualify for further review.

The academic editor (i.e., the Editor-in-Chief in the case of regular submissions, the Guest Editor in the case of Special Issue submissions, or an Editorial Board member in the case of a conflict of interest and of regular submissions if the Editor-in-Chief allows) will be notified of the submission and invited to perform an editorial pre-check. During the editorial pre-check phase, the academic editor will assess the suitability of the submission with respect to the focus and scope of the journal, as well as the overall scientific soundness of the manuscript, including the relevance of the references and the correctness of the applied methodology. Academic editors can decide to reject the manuscript, request revisions before peer-review, or continue with the peer-review process and recommend suitable reviewers.

Peer-review

Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to at least three independent experts for peer-review. A single-blind review is applied, where authors' identities are known to reviewers. Peer review comments are confidential and will only be disclosed with the express agreement of the reviewer. The review should be objective; all submissions should be given unbiased consideration regardless of affiliation, race, gender, ethnic origin, or religion of the authors.

In the case of regular submissions, in-house assistant editors will invite experts, including recommendations by an academic editor. These experts may also include Editorial Board Members and Guest Editors of the journal. Potential reviewers suggested by the authors may also be considered. Reviewers should not have published with any of the co-authors during the past three years and should not currently work or collaborate with any of the institutions of the co-authors of the submitted manuscript.

Editorial Decision

All the research articles, reviews and communications published in PEC go through the peer-review process and receive at least three reviews. The in-house editor will communicate the decision of the academic editor, which will be one of the following:

• Accepted
• Minor Revision / Revisions Required: The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given five to ten working days for minor revisions.
• Major Revision / Resubmit for Review: The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. The author needs to provide a point by point response or provide a rebuttal if some of the reviewer’s comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is normally provided. Authors will be asked to resubmit the revised paper within a suitable time frame, and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. If the required revision time is estimated to be longer than 2 months, we will recommend that authors withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting so as to avoid unnecessary time pressure and to ensure that all manuscripts are sufficiently revised.
• Rejected / Decline Submission: If additional experiments are needed to support the conclusions, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors will be encouraged to re-submit the paper once further experiments have been conducted. However, if the article has serious flaws, and/or makes no original significant contribution, no offer of resubmission to the journal is provided.

All reviewer comments should be responded to in a point-by-point fashion. Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response.

Author Appeals

Authors may appeal a rejection by sending an e-mail to the Editorial Office of the journal. The appeal must provide a detailed justification, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Editor's comments using an appeal form. Appeals can only be submitted following a “reject or decline submission” decision and should be submitted within three months from the decision date. Failure to meet these criteria will result in the appeal not being considered further.

The Managing Editor will forward the manuscript and related information (including the identities of the referees) to a designated Editorial Board Member. The Academic Editor being consulted will be asked to provide an advisory recommendation on the manuscript and may recommend acceptance, further peer-review, or uphold the original rejection decision. This decision will then be validated by the Editor-in-Chief. A reject decision at this stage is final and cannot be reversed.

Production and Publication

Once accepted, the manuscript will undergo professional copy-editing, proofreading, final corrections, pagination, and publication on the journal website.