Editorial policies

Peer-review and editorial policies
Drug Target Insights (DTI) is committed to a fair and transparent publication policy. The Editor in Chief and its board are primarily responsible for ensuring a fair review process at the end of which a final decision will be made and notified to the authors. The Editor in Chief is also responsible to select and appoint new  members of the board. Editorial board members (including the Editor in Chief) do not process their own work. Submissions they make to the journal are assigned to independent editors and reviewers, who do not  have any conflict of interest with the manuscript and authors. The Journal and the Publisher are in agreement that any advertising or commercial revenue will in no way influence editorial decisions.

Technical check at submission
All submission to DTI are initially screened for suitability by the Editorial Office, who performs an initial technical check based on the manuscript being a) suitable for the journal and its sections, b) with a sound author background and c) technically complete in all its parts. . If it is not deemed appropriate it will be rejected immediately. If the paper may be plagiarized, the Editorial Office will perform a thorough check using iThenticate by CrossCheck.

Editor assignment
All suitable submissions are then assigned to the Editor in Chief who will be in charge of selecting and inviting reviewers, evaluating their comments and finalizing an editorial decision. 

Peer-review
DTI adopts a single-blind peer-review process, which means that the author does not know the identity of the reviewer, but the reviewer knows the identity of the author: reviewers are asked to supply confidential comments and recommendations which will only be visible to the Editor and comments for the authors which are shared in an anonymous way. We invite both external  reviewers and members of the Editorial Board, and allow reviewers suggested by authors, although their invitation is decided by the Editors.  We allow 7 days for them to agree or decline to perform the review, asking to return their comments within 2 to 4 weeks from acceptance. Reviewer reports are confidential and are not posted with the articles. Editorials and correspondence may be reviewed and accepted by Editor’s decision.

Revisions
Should a revision be recommended, we ask authors to return their revised submission with a point-by-point reply within 2 weeks. Depending on the extent of changes suggested and how the authors have improved their manuscript, a second round of review may be required.

Editorial decision
The Editor in Chief will finalize the decision and will inform the authors. The final decision is based on the adequacy of comments supplied by the selected reviewers,  the replies supplied by the authors in revisions and the overall quality of the manuscript. The Editor in Chief can select from accept, reject, revision or invite additional reviewer(s).

Publication process

Accepted submissions will be processed and published online after author approval of proofs and payment of publication fees, which are only due after acceptance of the manuscript:  the final responsibility for published contents rests with the authors and the statements and opinions are solely those of the individual authors and contributors.  Upon acceptance authors receive an "Article Processing Charge form" and a "Licence to Publish form" which will need to be signed and returned to the Publisher to proceed with the publication process. DTI publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) which allows users to read, print and download, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, translate (for private use only) and reuse portions or extracts from the article in other works, quoting original source

Alternative license are available if required to meet  particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request.

Accepted submissions are edited by experienced language editing professionals, with a vast experience in the specific field the article reports on. No charge is made to the authors for language editing.  The corresponding author will receive proofs, which will include all changes made by the style editor and must be reviewed within 48 hours. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that there are no errors in the proofs.

Once approved  your article will be published online immediately: it will have a DOI number and be fully citable, free to read and download to all.