The Editorial Team for Advances in Natural Sciences: Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ANSN) takes great care to ensure that all submissions are treated impartially, regardless of the race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, political philosophy, sexual orientation, age, reputation of the authors or membership of the Editorial Board. All submissions to ANSN must meet the Ethical Policy for the journal.

General procedure

Pre-review stage

Upon receiving a new manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief will conduct an initial pre-review check to ensure the article is legible, complete, correctly formatted, original, within the scope of the journal, in the style of a scientific article and written in clear English. An initial quality assessment is also conducted to ensure the reported results are significant and not incomplete.

All submissions to the journal are screened using the plagiarism detection software, iThenticate.

Any article that has problems with any of the above criteria may be rejected at this stage. This pre-review decision is also reviewed by the Deputy Editor-in-Chief.

Reviewing stage

Articles passing successfully through the pre-review stage then begin formal peer-review.

Research papers submitted for publication in ANSN are all sent to two independent reviewers who are asked to report on the scientific value of the article.

Reviewers are selected by the Editor-in-Chief and may be scientists of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) or from other research labs/universities in Vietnam, members of the ANSN Editorial board, or other international scientists nominated by members of the ANSN Editorial Board.

Reviewers may recommend that the article is accepted, rejected, or that the article may be accepted after some revisions.

If the reviewers' reports are not in agreement, the Editor-in-Chief will act as a third reviewer and will decide the outcome of the article.

In the case of rejection, authors have the right to appeal against this decision to the Editorial Board.

Invitation to review an article

To uphold the impartiality of the journal, reviewers should consider any potential conflict of interest before agreeing to review a submission and should contact the editorial office to declare any potential conflict of interest in the following instances:

• if you are in direct competition with the authors
• if you are a co-worker or collaborator with one of the authors
• if you are in a position to exploit the authors' work (commercially or otherwise)
• if you are in a position which prevents you from giving an objective opinion of the work.

If you are unable to act as a reviewer due to a conflict of interest, we will then select an alternative reviewer.

Reviewer reports and anonymity

Reviewer reports are sent to the authors with the decision letter. Reviewer reports are generally sent intact but may undergo minor editing for clarity, to correct spelling or typographical errors, or to remove any text that inadvertently reveals the reviewer's identity.

Reviewer names are kept strictly confidential. Reviewers' identities may only be disclosed to ANSN Editorial Board members, who are also instructed to maintain confidentiality. ANSN thus operates a 'single-blind' review process, in which reviewers know the identity of the authors but authors do not know the identity of the reviewers.

Reviewers are asked not to transmit reports directly to the authors. We also ask that reviewers do not otherwise disclose their identity to the authors or discuss the papers they have reviewed with colleagues unless they have been published.

Revised papers

When authors make revisions to their article in response to the reviewers' comments, the revised version is usually returned to at least one of the original reviewers who is then asked whether the revisions are satisfactory and the paper can be accepted.

Review articles

Slightly different processes are in place for Review articles as these do not have the same requirement for novelty and original results; however the overall structure of the process will be the same.