Upon submission, each article will undergo an administrative check to ensure the article meets all submission requirements. Items checked will include a grammar check, formatting check, and ensuring the article was submitted in a required Journal of FST template.

Each article will be run through plagiarism software to check for similarity to other published work, including an author’s own work. It will be the manuscript is original and it has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The article will then be vetted by an experienced Editor to confirm the article fits within the scope of Journal of FST. Article submissions must present a clear advance over the state-of-the-art. If the article does not meet these criteria, it will be desk rejected without detailed reviewer feedback.

Should the article submission pass the initial prescreening process, it will then be assigned to an experienced Associate Editor (AE) who will provide a second thorough vetting of the article to determine its suitability for peer review based on quality, technical content, and scope. If the AE feels the article is appropriate for peer review, they will begin inviting qualified and relevant reviewers who are experienced in the topic area of the manuscript.

Once the AE receives sufficient feedback from the reviewers (with a minimum requirement of 2 independent reviews) they will evaluate the reviewers’ comments and determine if the article should be accepted or rejected, as per our binary peer review process. Please keep in mind that the final decision rests with the Associate Editor, and the reviewers only provide recommendations.