The manuscript submission and peer-review process can be broken down into seven steps:

1. The author submits a manuscript.
2. The editor assigns reviewers to the manuscript.
3. The reviewers review the manuscript.
4. The editor makes the first decision.
5. The author makes revisions and resubmits if necessary.
6. The Editorin-Chief makes a final decision.
7. The editor contacts the author regarding the final decision.

Once the manuscript has passed a quality control check, it is subjected to the strict single-blinded peer review process for a decision, either to accept, revise, or reject the article. Before manuscripts are sent for review, invited reviewers are confirmed regarding their availability, conflicts of interest with the manuscript, and their agreements to have their names and comments published afterward. Most manuscripts will be evaluated by 3–5 external reviewers. The average time from the submission to the first editorial decision is 1 month. According to these comments, the editor will make a decision to accept, reject, request a revision, or send it to another reviewer if needed to.
 
Manuscripts received from Editorial Board members will be screened by the Editor-in-Chief and sent to external peer reviewers. If the Editor-in-Chief is the author, then the article will be screened by the editor and sent to external peer reviewers. The Editorial Board members who are authors will also be excluded from making editorial decisions for their own manuscripts.

For manuscripts submitted to Special Issue, the quality control checks will be conducted, similarly, by the editor. Every editorial decision will be made by the Guest Editors of the Special Issue, with the final decision made under the advice of the Editor-in-Chief. For manuscripts authored by the Guest Editors, they will be exempted from making any editorial decisions throughout the editorial and peer-review process; in such cases, the conventional pathway of peer-review process will be adopted, where the Editor-in-Chief will make a decision to accept, reject, request a revision, or send it to another reviewer if needed to.

Reviewers' reports gathered throughout the peer-review process will be made available to authors using the Editorial Manager (EM) platform in order to maintain transparency during the whole manuscript processing procedure.

Accepted manuscripts will be subjected to a round of editing prior to production (i.e., typesetting).