Peer Review Policy

All papers, including those invited by the editor, are subject to peer review. Research in Vestibular Science (RVS) uses a double-blind peer review process, which means that author identities are concealed to the reviewers, and vice versa, and the identities of the reviewers and authors are visible to decision-making editor throughout the review process. The editor selects reviewers based on expertise, publication history, and past reviews. During the peer review process, reviewers can interact directly or exchange information (e.g., via submission systems or email) with only an editor, which is known as “independent review.” Each reviewer will advise the Editor-in-Chief if they consider the manuscript to be too closely related to their own personal interests such that it would be inappropriate for them to review it.

An initial decision will normally be made within 4 weeks after the reviewers agree to review a manuscript. Peer reviewers are required to maintain confidentiality about the manuscripts they review and must not divulge any information about a specific manuscript or its content to any third party without prior permission from the journal Editor-in-Chief. Manuscripts are not returned to authors regardless of whether or not they are accepted for publication. No information about the review process or editorial decision process is published on the article page.

All manuscripts from editors, employees, or members of the Editorial Board are processed in the same way as other unsolicited manuscripts. However, those authors will not engage in the selection of reviewers and the decision process. Editors will not handle their manuscripts even if the manuscripts are commissioned. The conflict of interest declaration should be added as follows.

Conflicts of Interest: OOO has been an editorial board member of Research in Vestibular Science since OOO but has no role in the decision to publish this article. No other potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.

Review Process

Screening after submission

Screening process will be conducted after submission. If the manuscript does not fit the aims and scope of the journal or does not adhere to the instructions to authors, it may be returned to the author immediately after receipt and without a review. Before reviewing, all submitted manuscripts are inspected by “Similarity Check powered by iThenticate (https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/), a plagiarism-screening tool. If too high a degree of similarity score is found, the Editorial Board will conduct a more thorough content screening. The criterion for similarity rate for further screening is usually 25%; however, the excess amount of similarity in specific sentences may be also checked in every manuscript. The settings for Similarity Check screening are as follows: It excludes quotes, a bibliography, small matches of 6 words, small sources of 1%, and the Methods section.

Peer review process

Submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by two or more reviewers in the corresponding field. They will usually assess the manuscript in terms of the relevance of its topic to the journal’s interests, creativity, the importance of the results, academic significance and effects in the relevant fields, clarity of the study description, and conformity to medical ethics. A reviewer will make one of the following four recommendations to the editor-in-chief within a fixed deadline: accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject. Revision is mostly performed on the basis of suggestions or recommendations of the reviewers, and the author should make appropriate changes based on each suggestion or recommendation. When not following a suggestion or recommendation, the author should provide a reasonable explanation for noncompliance. If the corresponding author does not submit a revised manuscript (in the absence of special notification) within 30 days after the notification of the decision, it will be deemed that they have withdrawn the manuscript. If a “review again after revision” recommendation is made three times, the manuscript will be rejected. The Editorial Board will make a final decision on the approval of the submitted manuscript for publication and can request any further corrections, revisions, and deletions of the article text if necessary. Statistical editing is also performed if the data requires professional statistical review by a statistician.

Appeals of decisions

Any appeal against an editorial decision must be made within 2 weeks of the date of the decision letter. Authors who wish to appeal against a decision should contact the editor-in-chief, explaining in detail the reasons for the appeal. All appeals will be discussed with at least one other associate editor. If consensus cannot be reached thereby, an appeal will be discussed at a full editorial meeting. The process of handling complaints and appeals follows the guidelines of COPE available from (https://publicationethics.org/appeals). RVS does not consider second appeals.

Post-publication discussions

To correct errors in published articles, the corresponding author should contact the journal’s editorial office with a detailed description of the proposed correction. If any errors or mistakes are found in an article, they can be corrected through an erratum (corrections of publisher’s errors), corrigendum (corrections of author’s errors), or retraction.