Peer review
The evaluation process of the scientific journal Pontica and its adjacent Supplementa is carried out in accordance with international evaluation standards.
The method of attracting proposals for articles differs between the journal and its supplementa. For the journal, the invitation is published on the institution's website, together with the editorial rules, the address for sending contributions and the deadline for submitting papers. The same information is also announced when launching the invitation to attend the Pontica International Session organized annually by the National History and Archaeology Museum in Constanța, given that some of the articles published in the journal are first presented during this session.
For the supplementary issues, which are usually organized thematically, a list of authors whose fields of interest coincide with the theme of the respective volume is compiled. Personalized invitations for publication are sent, accompanied by a short argument intended to describe the editorial approach and the reasons for its initiation, both in Romanian and in English.
Authors will respect research ethics, by avoiding conflicts of interest, personal attacks, making slanderous statements, expressing unfounded opinions, intellectual theft, plagiarism, etc. They must have, where applicable, permission to publish all attached documents, such as photographs, maps, etc. and correctly mention all sources used in the article. It is not allowed to use A.I.-based tools (Chat GPT, etc.) to generate the text or any other elements of the article submitted to the Pontica editorial office.
After centralizing the articles submitted for publication, they are submitted for review to Romanian or foreign personalities in the scientific field. The review proposals are accompanied by a standard evaluation form, which the reviewer must fill in and return to the editorial office. The review process is anonymized as far as the reviewers are concerned - the name of the reviewer is not made known to the authors whose article was the subject of the evaluation. In general, two review papers must be submitted for each article. If one of the two papers proposes the elimination of an article from the future summary, a third peer-review will be requested from one of the other specialists. If the article submitted is in a common language, the peer-review form will be in English, if it is in Romanian, the form will also be in Romanian.
The review process takes into account several evaluation criteria, such as the scientific quality of the articles, the thematic and chronological positioning of the articles in the journal profile, the veracity and sustainability of the information and statements made by the authors, the degree of originality, the belonging of the presented research to the geographical area of scientific interest – Dobrogea – (but not only), compliance with the publication rules imposed by the Pontica journal, the quality of the foreign language in which the article or its summary was written, the relevance of the bibliographic sources, etc. Authors should consider the revisions indicated by the reviewers, which are mostly mandatory. If these recommendations cannot be met, the author should thoroughly state the reasons.
Failure to apply the majority of the recommendations made by the reviewers by the author/authors may lead to the rejection of the article by the editor-in-chief and the editorial board. Also, any ethical violation will be resolved by the editor-in-chief and the editorial board, who have the right to reject articles that do not comply with the ethical norms of scientific research and the legislation in force (see Law No. 8/1996 on copyright and related rights).
The editor-in-chief is responsible for the scientific quality of the journal and supervises all review and editing activities in order to ensure the scientific success of the journal in its field of activity. He maintains communication with the members of the editorial board in order to ensure its efficiency in all editing activities.
The last stage in the peer review process consists of presenting the reviews in a meeting of the Editorial Board, as well as proposals for accepting or rejecting scientific contributions for the respective issues. After establishing the summary of the volume, the stage of collation and final technical editing follows. The resulting manuscript in pdf format is then submitted to a publishing house.