About the Journal

The Arab Journal of Forensic Sciences & Forensic Medicine (AJFSFM)  is aimed at promoting scientific communication among medical investigators worldwide. AJFSFM (pISSN 1658-6786) (eISSN 1658-6794), which benefits from an international editorial board, has been published biannually since 2014 by Naif Arab University for Security Sciences (NAUSS), Riyadh – Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Contents include peer-reviewed research papers covering different aspects of clinical toxicology and forensic medicine.

AJFSFM is adhering to ICMJE and COPE recommendations. This Journal accepts Original Articles, Review Articles, Book Reviews, Conference Proceedings, Case Reports, Technical Notes, and Letters to the Editor.

A full double-blind refereeing process is applied in which papers are sent to 3-4 experts for their peer review. The opinions of up to three experts are sought to evaluate the manuscript fully with respect to its significance, relevance, quality, and clarity. On receipt of all reviewer comments, and potentially further consultation with Associate Editors, a decision is made by the Associate Editors and the Editor-in-Chief, who will send the decision to the corresponding author. The whole process may take 2-3 months.

 

Possible decisions include:

  • Accepted
  • Accepted with Minor Revision
  • Accepted with Major Revision
  • Rejected

For papers, which require changes, the same reviewers will be used to ensure that the quality of the revised paper is acceptable.

Appealing an editorial decision

As a correspondent author, you have the right to appeal a journal editorial decision within 2 months from receiving the editorial decision.

Author(s) are invited to submit an appeal letter to the journal’s submission system (via opening a new discussion with the title: APPEAL THE EDITORIAL DECISION) or write an email to the editorial office with the same subject declared above.

Email: ajfsfm@nauss.edu.sa

The author (s) should address the appeal to the editor and explain clearly the basis for an appeal. The appeal letter should include:

  • The description of why the author(s) disagree with the decision. Providing specific responses to any of the editor’s or reviewers’ comments that contributed to the rejection decision.
  • Provide evidence of the author(s) believe a reviewer has made technical errors in their assessment of the author’s manuscript.
  • Including any evidence if the author(s) believe a reviewer may have a conflict of interest.
  • Provide any new information or data that you would like the journal to take into consideration.

Upon receiving the appeal on the journal side, our journal’s editorial board may involve any associate editor(s) who handled the peer review of the original submission.

Depending on the nature of the appeal, editors may confirm their decision to reject the manuscript, invite a revised manuscript, or seek additional peer- or statistical review of the original manuscript. Accordingly, the author should respect the Editorial Board Decision.

The journal's Editorial Board will consider one appeal per article, and all decisions on appeals are final. The timely review and decision-making process for new submissions will precede the appeals.

For more information about a journal’s appeals procedure, please get in touch with the editorial board via Email: ajfsfm@nauss.edu.sa

 

The complaint in our peer-review journals

Our peer-reviewed journal takes each complaint seriously, handles it professionally, and is guided by COPE’s policies and guidelines. The complainant’s issue is investigated and acted upon. Final decisions are conveyed to the complainant by the editorial board.

Mistakes and complaints can rarely occur during such a complex process of assembling the article materials in one production line at once. Especially when processing an article needs the audit of many editorial members along the article production line. We recognize this fact, and therefore, we seek to address all complaints as carefully as possible.

All the substantial errors and complaints are directly referred to Senior Editors.

Our peer-review journal pays attention to the following complaints:

  • Allegations of research errors and fraud
  • Violations of Research standards
  • Duplicate, multiple, concurrent publication
  • Undisclosed conflicts of interest
  • Authorship complaints
  • Plagiarism
  • Misappropriation of Research results or statistics
  • Reviewer bias or acts of harm out of the competition by reviewers

Researchers, Institutions, author(s) and reviewer(s) are invited to raise their complaints to the journal’s editorial board through the article submission system OJS (via opening a new discussion with the title: COMPLAINT) or write an email to the editorial office by typing COMPLAINT in the subject line.

Email: ajfsfm@nauss.edu.sa

Indexing & Abstracting:  CNKI, Index Copernicus, Directory of open access journals (DOAJ), Almanhal, SafetyLit, Scilit, Scienceopen, Hinari, WorldCat, Google Scholar, Genamics JournalSeek, JournalTOCs, UGC-CARE List, COPE, ICMJE

 

Processing/ Publishing Charges: AJFSFM is an open access (CC BY-NC) journal accessible for free on the Internet. We guarantee that no university library or individual reader will ever have to buy a subscription or pay any pay-per-view fees to access articles in the electronic version of the journal. In addition, the processing of a paper has no charge.