Peer-Review Process

Iraq Medical Journal (IMJ) is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal. All manuscripts will be acknowledged upon pre­senting to the Jour­nal office, if all stated requirements are met. According to the policy of peer review in our Journal, a large extent of manuscripts are rejected through an in-house evaluation process based on a category of criteria including over flow of manuscripts, out of scope cases, poor outcome, local studies, clinical contents etc.

This process takes no more than two weeks and the author(s) will be informed of the primary decision. The first stage passed manuscripts are sent to two or three review­ers. The entire review process is reliant upon obtaining feedback from referees and using their comments to guide revisions to the author's manuscript. On receipt of the revised article from the author, and after fi­nal approving by refe­rees, the letter of acceptance is issued to the corresponding author only. Due to plenty of papers waiting for publishing, the article takes more than 3-6 months for publication. Authors have the right to communicate to the editor if they do not wish their manuscript to be reviewed by a par­ticular reviewer because of potential conflicts of interest. The author can also suggest the name of possible competent reviewers but it is up to the editor to accept it. No article is rejected unless negative comments are received from at least two reviewers.

To assist the speed of peer review process, authors are requested to introduce four well-known experts with their contact details, but the Editor-in-Chief would be emancipated finally.

The revised version of the manuscript should be included with reply to referee comments separately article to article. In addition, the changes should be marked as underlined or coloured text in the article.