Review and standards

Publication criteria

These are the criteria applied to every submission. They are published before submission.

Why screening runs before any decision

Screening and classification run before any decision is made. This means each paper is first handled against the same published criteria.

Acceptance is not issued automatically. It is held until a named editor has reviewed and signed it.

A paper may be rejected where one or more of these applies:

The paper does not make an original contribution.
The evidence in the paper does not support the claim.
The methods cannot answer the question asked of them.
The paper misrepresents its sources, or relies on references or quotations that cannot be traced when they are material to the claim.
The submission contains undisclosed reuse, duplicate submission, or fabricated data.
The contribution is stated as more than the paper delivers.
Ethical approval or consent is missing where the work required it.

The journal will not reject a paper only because:

These constraints apply to the AI review panel and to editors.

Papers are classified as one of four tracks: Perspectives, Theory, Empirical, and Integrated. The track describes the kind of claim, not a ranking.

Perspectives

A position, synthesis or argument. No formal model or evidence test is required.

Theory

A formal or conceptual construct. A formal model may be developed without an evidence test.

Empirical

A measurement, observation or test. Evidence may be presented without a formal model.

Integrated

A theory advanced and tested. The paper includes both a model and evidence that tests it.

The same standard applies to all Accelerated Science journals.