EDITORIAL POLICY AND PEER REVIEW PROCESS

The Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Sciences maintains the highest standards of academic integrity through a rigorous, multi-stage peer-review process. This policy outlines the principles, procedures, and standards that ensure transparency and consistency in evaluating all submitted work from initial submission through final publication.

1. SUBMISSION AND INITIAL PROCESSING

1.1 Manuscript Submission
All manuscripts must be submitted through the journal's online submission system by the corresponding author. The submission system ensures proper documentation of authorship, facilitates efficient workflow management, and maintains a complete record of all communications throughout the review process. Authors are required to provide complete contact information, declare any potential conflicts of interest, and confirm that the manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by another journal.

1.2 Managing Editor Preliminary Assessment
Upon receipt of a new submission, the Managing Editor (ME) conducts initial screening for plagiarism detection to ensure originality and proper attribution of sources, artificial intelligence content detection to verify authentic authorship, formatting verification to confirm compliance with the journal's Author Guidelines, completeness of references and proper citation practices, and technical completeness including the presence of all required sections, figures, tables, and supplementary materials. Manuscripts that fail to meet these preliminary requirements are returned to authors with specific guidance for correction before proceeding to editorial review. This initial screening ensures that only technically complete and correctly formatted manuscripts advance to the substantive evaluation stages.

2. EDITORIAL SCREENING AND PEER REVIEW

2.1 Editor-in-Chief Initial Screening
Following successful Initial Screening, manuscripts undergo initial editorial screening by the Editor-in-Chief. This evaluation focuses on determining whether the manuscript aligns with the aims and scope of the journal, addresses topics relevant to mechanical engineering and sciences, and meets the minimum quality threshold for peer review. The Editor-in-Chief assesses the significance of the research question, the appropriateness of the methodology, and the potential contribution to the field. Manuscripts that clearly fall outside the journal's scope and demonstrate fundamental flaws that preclude meaningful peer review are rejected at this stage, with explanatory feedback provided to authors. This screening process protects both authors and reviewers by ensuring that peer review resources are directed toward manuscripts with realistic publication potential.

2.2 Assignment to Associate Editor-in-Chief
The Managing Editor assigns manuscripts that pass the initial Editor-in-Chief screening to an appropriate Associate Editor-in-Chief based on subject matter expertise and editorial capacity. The Associate Editor-in-Chief serves as the primary point of contact for the manuscript throughout the review process, conducting academic content screening to evaluate the scholarly merit and methodological soundness of the research. This second level of editorial assessment examines whether the research design is appropriate for the stated objectives, whether the analytical methods are sound and properly applied, whether the literature review demonstrates adequate knowledge of the field, and whether the findings represent an advancement of knowledge. Manuscripts that do not meet these academic standards may be returned to authors for revision before proceeding to external Independent peer review.

2.3 Peer Review Process
The journal employs a single-blind peer-review process, in which reviewers' identities remain anonymous to authors. This system preserves reviewer independence and enables honest, critical evaluation without concern for potential conflicts of interest. Upon passing academic content screening, the Associate Editor-in-Chief invites a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to evaluate the manuscript. Reviewer selection considers factors such as publication record in the relevant field, research expertise aligned with the manuscript's topic, geographical and institutional diversity, and the absence of conflicts of interest with the research.

Reviewers are asked to provide detailed written feedback addressing the manuscript's originality, methodological rigor, significance of findings, clarity of presentation, and overall contribution to the field. The peer review period typically spans 1 to 6 months, though reviewer availability may extend it. The journal makes every effort to secure timely reviews while ensuring that reviewers have adequate time to conduct thorough evaluations. Authors receive regular status updates throughout the review process.

3. EVALUATION CRITERIA

Manuscripts are reviewed based on the following six primary criteria for quality, relevance, and fit with the journal.

Originality/novelty: Manuscripts must present new work that significantly extends existing literature. This would also apply to novel theoretical concepts, new experimental approaches, applications of existing techniques, and unique perspectives on problems of current interest.

Significance and validity: Research implications and validity require appropriate interpretation of the results, with conclusions supported by the evidence presented. Reviewers assess whether authors have made reasonable claims based on their data, have been transparent about limitations, and have situated their findings within the appropriate context of the field.

Layout and format: The format confirms that the manuscript structure is conducive to communicating research clearly, that figures and tables are suitably formatted and referenced in the text, and that they meet the professional standards for scientific publication. While some formatting problems can be corrected during revision, manuscripts with serious presentation deficiencies might need to be extensively restructured.

Relevance: Contents fall within the scope of mechanical engineering and the sciences and address topics of current significance to researchers, professionals, and educators in these areas. The work should have potentially significant impacts well beyond its research directions, such as guiding future research experiments, engineering practices, and educational objectives.

Language quality: The quality of language must be clear and comprehensible for international readers to understand complex technical information. The journal acknowledges that most authors are not native English speakers and thus provides constructive criticism to ensure clarity and readability. At least the writing should be clear so that a reviewer can accurately assess scientific judgment without being distracted by grammatical errors. The Editors can recommend professional language editing services if the language in a contribution seriously impairs understanding.

Overall merits: The manuscript is evaluated in its entirety and cumulatively for its overall worth to the scientific community. This evaluation balances the manuscript's merits with its flaws, and considers factors such as replicability (of methods and results), citations, potential to influence future work, and contribution to theory. The evaluation of merit as a whole integrates all other considerations into a balanced recommendation on whether publication is in the best interests of the journal and its readers.

4. EDITORIAL DECISION-MAKING

4.1 Associate Editor-in-Chief Recommendation
Upon receiving reviewer feedback, the Associate Editor-in-Chief carefully evaluates all comments and recommendations to formulate a preliminary decision. This evaluation synthesizes reviewer assessments with the Associate Editor's own expert judgment of the manuscript's quality and contribution. When reviewer opinions diverge significantly, the Associate Editor-in-Chief may seek additional expert input and provide a detailed justification for the recommended decision. The Associate Editor-in-Chief then forwards the manuscript, reviewer reports, and a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief for final decision.

4.2 Editor-in-Chief Final Decision
The Editor-in-Chief holds ultimate authority for all publication decisions. After reviewing the Associate Editor-in-Chief's recommendation, original reviewer reports, and the manuscript itself, the Editor-in-Chief makes a final determination regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection. While the Associate Editor-in-Chief's recommendation carries substantial weight, the Editor-in-Chief may exercise independent judgment when exceptional circumstances warrant, when additional considerations affect the publication decision, and/or when editorial policy requires deviation from reviewer recommendations. The Editor-in-Chief's decision is final.

4.3 Communication with Authors
When revision is required, the Associate Editor-in-Chief or Editor-in-Chief communicates the decision to the corresponding author along with detailed reviewer comments and specific guidance for revision. Decision letters clearly articulate the required changes, the resubmission timeline, and the expected revision. Authors are allowed to respond to reviewer concerns, clarify misunderstandings, and provide additional information as needed. The communication process ensures that authors understand the basis for the decision and have a clear direction for improving their manuscript.

4.4 Conflict of Interest Management
All editors are excluded from handling manuscripts they have authored, co-authored, work produced by family members, close team members, recent collaborators, entities in which they hold financial interests. Such submissions are assigned to other editorial team members to ensure complete impartiality. This policy extends to situations where editors have previously collaborated with authors, are engaged in competing research, or have any relationship that could reasonably be perceived as creating bias. The journal maintains strict protocols for identifying and managing potential conflicts, requiring editors to disclose relevant relationships and recuse themselves when appropriate. This commitment to managing conflicts of interest protects the integrity of the peer review process and ensures fair treatment of all submissions.

5. DECISION CATEGORIES AND REVISION PROCESS

Editorial decisions following peer review fall into five distinct categories reflecting the range of possible outcomes.

Accept as submitted indicates the manuscript meets all standards without modifications and proceeds directly to production. It is rare and reserved for exceptional submissions that demonstrate an exemplary research design, a crystal-clear presentation, and significant contributions to the field. Accepted manuscripts proceed directly to copyediting and production.

Accept with minor revisions requires small adjustments, such as clarifications, modest improvements to figures and tables, literature review, minor additions to the discussion, and formatting corrections, completed within four weeks without additional external review. These revisions do not require new data collection. Authors receive four weeks to complete minor revisions, and revised manuscripts do not undergo additional external review, as the Associate  Editor-in-Chief verifies that concerns have been adequately addressed.

Major revisions are required to address significant concerns, including technical errors, insufficient data, methodological weaknesses, and unclear presentation. Missing components, such as validation studies, should be added, and error analysis should be revised with revised manuscripts undergoing additional review by the original reviewers or new experts, depending on the nature and extent of changes. The manuscript addresses a worthy topic and shows promise, but requires substantial improvement to meet publication standards. 

Revise and resubmit indicates that the research is valuable but requires extensive revisions and may fundamentally reshape the work. This decision suggests that the research question is worthwhile and that the approach has merit, but that execution, analysis, and presentation need substantial improvement. Required revisions may include reformulating the research question to better align with the findings, conducting additional experiments to address critical gaps, performing more analysis using additional methods, significantly restructuring to improve logical flow and clarity, and addressing fundamental methodological concerns to include necessary validation. Resubmitted manuscripts are treated as new submissions undergoing complete peer review. 

Reject applies to manuscripts with fundamental flaws, serious methodological errors, fabricated and falsified data, plagiarism, insufficient originality, misalignment with scope, ethical violations, and no opportunity for resubmission. While rejected manuscripts may be appropriate for other venues with a different scope, they cannot be resubmitted to this journal.

6. PRODUCTION AND PUBLICATION

6.1 Copyediting and Final Plagiarism Check
Accepted manuscripts are sent to copyediting. Authors receive a proof with suggested corrections for grammatical errors, improvements in clarity, consistency, and verification of references and formatting according to the journal’s author guidelines. Copyeditors then perform one last plagiarism check, using dedicated software that screens against published literature, the web sources, and electronic journal files. Detected similarities are checked for proper citation, technical usage , and problematic matching. Where a manuscript is found to have a serious plagiarism issue, the article may be returned to the Editor-in-Chief for investigation and potential withdrawal of acceptance. This last check is to maintain the integrity of the record and ensure that no cases of academic misconduct are published. Copyeditors also compile metadata for search engine indexing and discovery, such as keywords, an abstract, and the author's information.

6.2 Galley Proof Review
After copyediting, a camera-ready galley proof is sent to the corresponding author for final approval. Authors have 72 hours (Three business days) to check proofs, figures, and tables, as well as verified equations and technical content, to ensure the correctness of the final version. Substantive revisions identified at this stage could require further typesetting before publication. Authors are given 72 hours to review the electronic proofs for any clerical errors, rather than substantive alterations. If significant revisions are found at this stage, the manuscript may be returned to the production team for further work before publication.

6.3 Online Publication
After the authors have reviewed and approved the galley proof and any last-minute corrections have been made, the article is published in final form on the journal website. Published articles are assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for permanent citation and linking, are indexable in major databases and search engines, are available for immediate access to a global audience of readers, and serve as a permanent part of the scholarly record. The journal is dedicated to the long-term dissemination and preservation of published research.

7. REVIEWER FEEDBACK MANAGEMENT

The AEiC screens all reviewer comments prior to transmission to authors and ensures that feedback is at a professional level suitable for the scholarly environment. Reviewer comments that include sensitive information, inappropriate language, personally insulting remarks, or unsuitable language will be edited and/or deleted. Highly sensitive comments, such as direct assessments of the experimental novelty and significance, direct advice on publication, and severe methodological criticism, which require editorial decision, should be entered in the confidential section of the review form, which only editors will have access to. This editorial moderation maintains that author feedback is actionable, polite, and constructive, while preserving the value of reviewer comments.

8. CONTINUOUS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

The JMES commits to publishing high-quality research results through rigorous editorial screening, peer review, and adherence to professional production standards. The editorial board constantly reviews and updates the review and publication process to increase transparency, add quality assurance measures, and improve timeliness. This rigorous process ensures the relevance, originality, high quality, and dissemination potential we provide to the authors, whilst advancing both mechanical engineering and sciences and serving the international academic community. The editorial team is committed to ensuring that each published article continues to meet international standards and expectations for quality, ethics, and impact.

The flowchart below illustrates the complete peer-review process from manuscript submission through publication decision: