Review & Revision

After a technical verification by our publisher Springer Nature, all submissions are considered by a member of the Editorial Team on relevance and suitability for the journal. If a submission is rejected at this stage, we commit to giving the reason as soon as possible, so that if authors wish to find an alternative place of publication, they can do so without undue delay.

Peer Review

Book Reviews and Letters to the Editor are usually reviewed by a member of the Editorial Team. All other manuscripts that are deemed relevant and suitable for the journal are subject to double-blind peer review, where authors and peer reviewers remain anonymous to each other.

Peer Reviewers will consider submissions according to the following criteria (where applicable):

  • Relevance to the mission statement of the journal
  • Overall quality
  • Academic standards
  • Originality and its contribution to the field
  • Insightfulness and depth of analysis or reflection
  • For empirical research, methodological rigour
  • For multi-disciplinary papers, the success of integration of the material

Revision

If after review, authors are asked to revise their work, they will be sent a copy of the reviewers’ recommendations. After making the recommended alterations, authors should include a full account of the changes in the resubmission.

Although ABR tries to keep the barrier to submission low by being flexible on issues such as word count and formatting at the submission stage, we do ask that at the revision stage, authors address these issues in more detail. More information on word count and formatting can be found earlier in this document.

Editorial Decision

Revised papers may be returned to the reviewer(s) or may be assessed by a member of the Editorial Team, based on the recommendations of the reviewer(s). The final decision on publication remains the sole responsibility and discretion of the Editorial Team.

The Editorial Team is committed to building capacity in bioethics. Thus, even in cases where a submission is rejected a full account of the reasons will be given.