A peer review-based three-round review system (preliminary review by an editor, expert review by external reviewers, and final review by the editor-in-chief) is implemented for the Journal. The Editorial Office makes a decision on acceptance or not of a manuscript based on the assessment results of the Editorial Board members and external reviewers, thus ensuring the academic quality of the Journal. Authors’ names, affiliations, and other relevant information will be removed before a manuscript is sent for review, and the review process is double-blind. The manuscript is processed as follows:

 Manuscript review process

1. Receipt of manuscript: After receiving a submission, the Editorial Office registers the manuscript and sends an acknowledgement of receipt to all authors, informing them of the manuscript number and the account information used for manuscript inquiry when they log on to the website.

2. Preliminary review: If any of the following criteria is met, the manuscript will be rejected or suggested to be submitted to other journals. (1) inconsistent with the aims and scope of the Journal; (2) academic misconduct literature check result: overall repetition rate of over 30%; (3) lacking in novelty and repetitive of previous researchers’ work; (4) similar to too many manuscripts and repetitive of their content; (5) vague, logically confusing, and poorly readable; (6) has obvious flaws in the experiment or theoretical research, with uninformative data and noticeable graphical errors.

3. External review: The editor sends the manuscript to two external reviewers for peer review at the same time. The manuscript is reviewed for novelty, value for research, and academic level. In principle, 30 days is required for review. In case of a disagreement between the peer reviewers, their comments should be summarized and submitted to the Editorial Board for discussion, and the Editor-in-Chief will make the final decision. If both experts make a proposal of “rejection”, the Editorial Office will reject the manuscript.

Note: The peer reviewers selected by the Editorial Office for manuscript review bear no conflict of interest with the authors or members of the research group.

4. Editor-in-Chief’s final review: The Editor-in-Chief of the Editorial Office regularly (monthly) reviews the manuscripts of the month and makes the final decision on acceptance or not of the manuscripts mainly based on the comments of external reviewers and authors' revision. If the manuscript needs a re-review by an expert, it will be sent for a second round of external review; if the manuscript needs revision, it will be sent back to the author for revision and resubmission.

 Disposition after review

1. Acceptance after revision: Both reviewers agree and suggest to publish the manuscript after revision.

2. Re-review after revision: The editor sends the manuscript back to the authors for revision according to reviewers’ comments and manuscript preparation guidelines, and will re-examine the manuscript in case of major revisions; if the revised manuscript fails to meet the requirements, a decision of rejection can be made.

3. Rejection: The editor makes a decision of rejection of the manuscript according to reviewers’ comments and relevant guidelines. If the authors have a different opinion on the reviewers’ comments, they can file an appeal.