Submitting a manuscript to Belitung Nursing Journal (BNJ) for review implies that the manuscript has not been published anywhere else, is not being simultaneously submitted to other journals, and has not already been accepted for publication elsewhere, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, academic thesis, or archived in an institutional repository or the author's webpage, as stated in the deposit policy.
Upon submission, the Managing Editor conducts an initial evaluation of all manuscripts for their suitability for formal review. Those manuscripts which lack novelty, originality, suffer from scientific or technical flaws, display a high rate of similarity with prior publications (indicating plagiarism), or lack a significant message are rejected without undergoing formal peer review. Furthermore, manuscripts which are unlikely to be of interest to the readers of Belitung Nursing Journal (BNJ) are also subject to rejection at this stage. The editorial review process typically takes between one to seven days.
Manuscripts that meet the suitability criteria for publication in BNJ are forwarded to the Editorial board member(s), who will recommend one or two expert reviewers. In case they are unable to do so, the Managing Editor will select the reviewers. The journal follows a double-blind peer-review process, where both the reviewers and authors remain anonymous to each other. For editorials and letters to editors, the decision is made during the editorial review stage, and there is no need for a peer-review process. The peer-review process typically takes four to six weeks, and more information can be found here.
Editor-in-Chief, based on the feedback from the reviewers and editorial board members. The Editorial Board Members can provide an initial decision or recommendation to be reviewed by the Managing Editor and Editor-in-Chief. The corresponding author is notified of the comments and suggestions received from the reviewers and editorial board members, which may include acceptance, rejection, or revision of the manuscript. The author may be requested to provide a point-by-point response to reviewers' comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process continues until the reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript.
Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, it undergoes copy editing to ensure proper grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. The corresponding author is then provided with a page proof in doc. format. During this stage, the copy editor may ask the author to clarify or verify certain sentences or paragraphs, and to complete the reference format. The corresponding author is expected to review and return the corrected proofs within three to seven days. Any corrections received after that period may not be incorporated.
The final proof of the article in PDF format with a fixed journal layout will be sent by the proofreader. There are no significant changes at this stage, and authors are only required to verify their names, affiliations, and the writing format, including typos, grammar, punctuation, and layout format. The corresponding author should return the final proof within five days.
In order to disseminate knowledge and information quickly and widely, BNJ publishes articles online as Early View immediately after proofreading, before they are included in an upcoming issue. These Early View articles have undergone peer-review and have been officially published by BNJ. Once the article is assigned to a specific volume/issue, the Early View version is replaced with the Final version. The only differences between the Early View and Final versions are that the the Early View version does not have page numbers and the DOI number has not yet been registered or activated. However, the DOI number and the layout format of the article remain the same.