Fountain Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences (FUJNAS) operates a Double-Blind Peer Review Policy.  The double-blind peer review procedure guarantees objectivity and avoids prejudice during the review process. When a review is conducted double-blindly, neither the reviewer nor the author knows each other's identity. This improves neutrality and prevents potential biases from skewing the reviewer's judgment. Double-blind peer review not only increases the process's efficacy as an academic journal quality control method but also makes it more equitable for all parties involved.  

The FUJNAS double-blind review process begins with submitting your manuscript; our editor decides whether your paper is a good fit based on our pre-review assessment, which includes a plagiarism check and conformity with the authors' guidelines.  If the editor is satisfied with the pre-assessment of the manuscript, a copy without the author's details is sent to at least two reviewers by the editor.  The editor keeps your identity, as well as that of the reviewers, hidden. Reviewers may see the paper’s title and introduction, but they do not know who wrote it. The reviewer will then review your paper and send comments and recommendations to the editor, and the editor will then return the paper to you with their comments. You are responsible for making any necessary changes based on the reviewer’s comments and then resubmitting the paper. The editor will then assign the paper to another reviewer, who may or may not be the same person as the first reviewer. These steps are repeated until both reviewers agree that the paper is ready for publication.

At FUJNAS, a desk rejection is usually decided within the first week after submission if the article is not aligned with the journal’s interests or objectives or if a very preliminary version has been submitted (with errors, shortcomings, or a poorly developed argument). The double-blind peer review process is followed for all articles published in FUJNAS.

 

Guidelines for Double-Blind Peer Review

Fountain Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences employs double-blind peer review for all its articles; as a result, both the author and reviewer are anonymous to one another. To ensure the success of this process, the author(s) need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a manner that does not reveal their identity. 

To help the author(s) prepare their manuscript, authors should be guided by the outlined points when submitting to the Fountain Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences. 

• Author(s) should submit a Title Page containing the Author details and Blinded Manuscript with no author details as two (2) separate files.

preparing the Title Page

The title page should contain the title, authors' names and affiliations, and a complete address for the corresponding author, including telephone and e-mail addresses.

Preparing the Blinded Manuscript.

To guarantee that the article is appropriately ready for double-blind peer review, additional actions must be made in addition to the evident necessity of removing names and affiliations from the paper's title.  The following are the essential things to keep an eye on to facilitate this process:

• When referencing the Authors' prior work, use the third person case. For example, instead of saying "as we have shown in our previous work," say "has shown by (Anonymous, 2023).
• Ensure that tables or figures do not contain any pointer to the author's affiliation.
• Eliminate all mentions of financing sources.
• Leave out the acknowledgements.
• Make sure document properties are anonymized and remove any identifiable information from file names, such as author names.
• Refrain from removing necessary self-references or other references, and restrict self-references to sources that will interest the reviewer of the submitted work.