GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT REVIEWED JOURNALS AND THEIR PUBLISHERS (PEER REVIEW)
All over the world there are hundreds journals, whose topics cover all possible spheres of scientific activity. The scientometrical databases carry out the indexation of journals.
The editorial staff of journals cooperates with the publishing house that provides with online platform to submit the articles and renders the publishing services. The information about most famous publishing houses is provided in Table 1.
Table 1. Information about most famous publishing houses
| Publishing house | Country | Amount of journals |
| Springer | Netherlands, USA | 2900 |
| Elsevier | USA | 2200 |
| WILEY-BLACKWELL | USA | 1500 |
| BioMed Central | UK | 152 |
| KARGER | USA | 76 |
| Nature publishing group | UK, USA | 55 |
| Mary Ann Liebert | USA | 50 |
| BMJ PUBLISHING GROUP | UK |
General requirements
Any scientist can submit the manuscript for consideration to these journals. But this manuscript shall correspond to requirements that are always in detail described on webpage of some or other journal in section “indications for authors”. The manuscript will not be sent to the editor if the requirements are not followed. But in this case the employee of Editorial office contacts the author of manuscript and will tell the inaccuracies.
The indications for authors contain the information about scientific directions of journal and types of scientific works (original publications, literature reviews, etc.) that are accepted for consideration. The requirements to structure of manuscripts are universal for all journals and publishers: title page, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, list of references. The requirements to the content of each from these elements of structure may differ that is always shown in indications for authors.
Language
English is an international scientific language; therefore the articles are submitted in British or American English. There are a great number of resources, including on the base of publishing house, for authors, who are not sure in quality of their English, where the linguistic editing will be made for a certain fee.
Rating of journal
The rating of journal plays the great role. It depends on the number of citations of articles, is calculated by the formula and is called “impact factor”. The impact-factor is calculated for current year and for 5 years. The higher impact factor, the higher the rating of journal is. However the application of impact factor is subjective and is taken into consideration by the editor while submitting the article for consideration. If the editor thinks that the article does not correspond to the rating of journal or its topic, the author of such article would be refused very quickly.
Acceptance for publication
The proportion of articles, accepted for publication, is inversely proportional to impact-factor of journal. In average 10-30% from all submitted articles are accepted for publication. However there is an exception from this rule. This is journal PloS One – an electronic journal, in which they accept approximately 70% of submitted articles for publication. This journal was a kind of protest to some unfair refusals in other scientific publications. PloS One is a multidisciplinary journal; it publishes all articles in the format, open for downloading, and remains all copyrights to the authors of manuscript. The payment for publication is charge and depends on the rating of the country due to GDP per capita.
Payment for publication
Even when the payment is charged for publication it is not a guaranty for acceptance of manuscript for publication. In any case a manuscript shall correspond to modern criteria (methodology, statistical processing, rational discussion, etc.) that are assessed by anonymous reviewers. But the editor of journal always takes the final decision.
The payment is established by the publisher but it may differ in different journals of the same publisher. The information about payment, if any, is always provided in Authors Guidelines (this section may be called “Charges”, “Costs for authors” etc). The payment is charged for publication of colored pictures, “open access” (“Open access” – option, at which all desired readers may download the article without payment), for excess in limit for a number of pages in manuscript. The payment in each journal depends on certain parameters or is absent in general.
For example:
a) The payment in journal “Circulation” is USD 70 per one black-and-white page and USD 72 per colored one if the text of manuscript (original article) is less than 7,000 words (limit). If the manuscript has more than 7,000 words, so the payment for each next 1,000 words over the limit will be USD 425.
b) The payment in journal “European Journal of Endocrinology” is absent if the manuscripts contain up to 4,500 words and the colored pictures are published in black and white in hard version of journal (however the color is preserved in electronic copy of journal). If the manuscript contains over 4,500 words, so the publisher charges the payment per each extra page in the amount of EUR 350.
c) The payment in all journals by publisher “BioMed Central” is varied within USD 1,300-2,500 and does not depend on the amount of pages or colored pictures.
d) The payment in journal “PloS One” is standardized and depends only of GDP per capita in the country, from which the article was submitted. Ukraine belongs to group 2; the payment for countries in this group is USD 500.
Free publications
There are the variants when journals publish free of charge. The payment may be absent if the limit of words is not exceeded and the pictures are published in color only in online version of journal. The payment will not also be charged if the option “open access” is not selected.
If even the authors have no financing, one can submit the letter to the editorial council, explain the difficult financial situation in the establishment, where the research was made and try to receive the release from payment, based on such situation.
Examples of some journals (there are many of them) that publish free of charge if the conditions are followed: World Journal of Surgery (limit of words), European Journal of Endocrinology (limit of words, the payment is charged if there are more than 6 pages), International Journal of Cancer (limit of pages, the payment is charged if there are more than 8 pages).
Andriy Dinets, Karolinska Instituten (Sweden), employee at department of surgery No 4 at O.O. Bohomolets NMU.
