Editorial process and peer review

Submitted articles will undergo a preliminary editorial evaluation by the Editorial Board before being forwarded to the reviewers. The Editorial Board reserves the right to determine whether articles match the editorial line of "Finance, Markets and Valuation" and fulfill the quality standards of the journal. At this stage, an article can be rejected for the following reasons:

• The article does not match the scope of the journal
• The article does not meet the ethical obligations adopted for scientific publications
• Absence or incomplete data about the authors, including contact information and ORCID
• Absence of keywords
• Absence of JEL classification
• Absence of the references
• Not listing the references according with the style determined by the journal, including DOI
• Poor writing style
• Length of the article is too short (less than 8 pages)
• Insufficient number of references (less than 20 sources)
• The article was already published in another edition (including electronic editions)
• Revealing plagiarism in the article (totally more than 35% of the text)

The review process is a collaborative process that allows manuscripts submitted to a journal to be evaluated and commented upon by independent experts within the same field of research. Reviewers may be selected from the Editorial Board of the journal, but preferably external reviewers are appointed. The journal Assistant Editors will identify suitable experts and invite them to review. The evaluation, critique and suggestions made by reviewers provides authors with feedback to improve their work. The decisions by reviewers regarding the quality of the paper allows the Editors to assess the article’s suitability for publication in the journal.

Finance, Markets and Valuation welcomes suggestions from authors, but reserves the right to select their own reviewers. Equally, if authors have a good reason to request that a particular person should be excluded from review, they may state this when they submit the article. However, the Editors are free to choose the reviewers they consider appropriate.

In order to become a reviewer, potential reviewers are asked to provide their ORCHID ID and register in Publons (see the review form provided below).

Finance, Markets and Operations has a double-blind peer review process: the reviewers have no information concerning the article authors and the identity of the reviewers is not disclosed to the authors.
An article can be directly rejected by the Editors without review in case it does not match the scope of the journal or it does not fulfill the basic quality standards of Finance, Markets and Valuation.

Documents which comply with the scope of the journal and the basic quality standards will be forwarded to the external reviewers selected by the Editorial Board. Invitations are sent to reviewers and the articles are only sent to those who agree to review. Reviewers are given between 2-3 weeks to return their review, and reminders are sent. However the journal cannot guarantee a time to decision since reviewers may be late, or there may be problems in finding the right reviewer. In all cases the journal editorial office will endeavor to manage the process as speedily as possible.

Peer reviewers assess the article considering following criteria:

• Originality / Novelty
• Style and article writing
• Relevance of the article in the research topic
• Appropriate literature research
• Research methodology
• Clear presentation of results and conclusions
• Interest to the readers
• Overall merit

Reviewers are ask to use the review form suggested by the journal. Reviewers must be polite and constructive in their review report and justify their critics on the work. Reviews should be conducted objectively.
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. They also must inform the Editor if they detect plagiarism.

Finance, Markets and Valuation complies with the Committee on Publication Ethics Guidelines for Peer Reviewers which provides a comprehensive guide to the ethics of peer review

Reviews should be conducted within the stipulated deadlines. If a reviewer feels that it is not possible for him/her to complete the review in time, he/ she must inform the Editor, so that another reviewer can be assigned.
Reviewers must keep confidentiality about the information regarding the articles they review and must treat it as privileged information.

Decisions made by reviewers regarding publication may be:

• Accept submission: Accept publication of the article with no changes required.
• Minor revision: Accept publication of the article after several small corrections are done in the original article.
• Major revision: Authors must undertake compulsory modifications and substantially process the article before sending it back to the Editors.
• Reject the article.

On receipt of at least two reviews, the Editor-in-Chief will make a decision of (1) accept, (2) minor revision, (3) major revision, or (4) reject.
The reasons for the decision will be communicated to the authors in a maximum lapse of five working days after receiving the last review. Communication includes the commentaries, suggestions and observations of reviewers. The content of each peer review is confidential, for use only by Finance, Markets and Valuation and the authors.

When the decision of minor/major revision is made, and the authors do not revise their articles satisfactorily after receiving reviewer reports, then the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject the article. When revised articles are received they will either be sent out for further review or the Editor-in-Chief will make a decision depending on the level of revision requested.
The Editorial Board is in charge of solving conflicts, complaints or nonconformities expressed by the authors vis-à-vis the results of the evaluation process.