Peer Review Process

This section provides a brief overview of the peer review process for the Annals of Cardiothoracic Surgery (ACS).

1. Review criteria
Manuscripts are evaluated according to the following criteria:

  • the manuscript is written clearly and in accordance with the guidelines for authors;
  • the material is original and timely;
  • appropriate study methods and statistics have been used;
  • the data are valid;
  • the conclusions are reasonable and well supported by the data;
  • the information contained in the manuscript is important, topical, and medically relevant;
  • the manuscript is within the scope of an ACS upcoming focused issue


2. Peer Review Mode
ACS uses double-blind peer review, which means that the identities of both the reviewer and the author are kept unknown to each other throughout the review process.

Typically, every manuscript is reviewed by at least two reviewers. However, on occasion the opinions of more reviewers are sought. Peer reviewers are selected based on their expertise and ability to provide high quality, constructive, and fair reviews. For research manuscripts, the editors may, in addition, seek the opinion of a statistical reviewer.

The existence of a manuscript under review should not be revealed to anyone other than the peer reviewers and editorial staff. Peer reviewers are required to maintain confidentiality in relation to the manuscripts they review and must not divulge any information about a specific manuscript or its content to any third party without prior permission from the journal’s editors.

Information from submitted manuscripts may be systematically collected and analyzed to help improve the quality of the editorial or peer-review processes. Identifying information remains confidential.

Final decisions regarding the publication of manuscripts are made by the Editor-in-Chief.

3. Online review system – free submissions
To ensure a convenient and efficient peer review process, peer reviews for free submissions are generally conducted electronically via the OJS system , which can be accessed through the journal’s website (https://www.annalscts.com/author/submitt).

4. Peer review flowchart for all submissions

  • 1) Handling Editors pass the submitted manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief.
  • 2) Depending on the topic of the submitted manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief passes the article to the Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief/Associate Editor(s) or an Editorial Board member with related expertise.
  • 3) The assigned Editorial Board members with related expertise review the manuscript or recommend external reviewers to the Editorial Office. A literature search may be conducted to identify appropriate external experts.
  • 4) External experts review the manuscript.
  • 5) The external experts make recommendations.
  • 6) The recommendations are sent to the Editor-in-Chief, along with a review from the assigned Associate Editor and member of the Editorial Board.
  • 7) The Editor-in-Chief makes a decision on the manuscript, for which there are four options: accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject.

5. Peer review for papers submitted by the journal’s editorial team member (Editor-in-Chief/Guest Editor/Editorial Board Member/ etc.) or for a special issue/series

Editorials written by the journal's own editors do not undergo external peer review. Articles reporting original research, analysis or other features done by the editors are independently peer reviewed.

To assure impartial decision-making and to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, authors with a position in the journal’s editorial team will be excluded from any editorial handling of their manuscript (including reviewing, editing, and the final decision). Besides, editors are not involved in decisions about papers which have been written by family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in which the editor has an interest. Any such submission is subject to all of the journal's usual procedures, with peer review handled independently of the relevant editor and their research groups. For example, articles from the Editor-in-Chief will be assigned to an Associate Editor or, in cases where the Associate Editor is not available, to an Editorial Board Member with related expertise. After the review comments have been received from external reviewers, the manuscript will be returned to the Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member to make a final decision.

For submission to special series, we follow the COPE guideline on Guest edited collections (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/guest-edited-collections).


Updated on January 1, 2026