HPLPB editorial office executes strictly the three-stage review process for all the manuscripts. In the first stage, the scientific editor carries out the primary review of the original manuscript. Manuscripts out of the HPLPB’s scope or incomplete or not well written might be rejected or returned to author for revision at this stage. In the second stage, the editorial director (or executive editor-in-chief) recheck the format and content of the manuscript while peer experts review the manuscript to judge its innovativeness, academic level and suitability for publishing. In the third stage, the editor-in-chief or the authorized editor fulfills the conclusive review and makes the final decision whether to publish the manuscript or not. Only those manuscript passes all the three stages can be published formally. To ensure its academic quality, HPLPB rejects manuscripts for not satisfying the academic and publication requirements at any of these three reviewing stages.

The general principle of HPLPB’s peer-review is: For each manuscript, HPLPB chooses 2-3 (might be more) peer experts of different affiliations as peer-reviewers and makes a decision according to the rule of “The minority obeys the majority”.

Specific requirements of HPLPB peer-review are as follows:

(1) The peer-reviewers can’t share the same affiliation with the author(s).

(2) A manuscript with “Agree to publish” conclusion of two or more peer-reviewers is classified as a paper “to be accepted”, while a manuscript with “Disagree to publish” conclusion of two or more peer-reviewers will be rejected.

(3) Peer-reviewers are required to have an academic rank equal to or higher than associate professor, or have a doctoral degree.

(4) HPLPB performs single-blind peer-review, i.e., the peer-reviewers are anonymous to the authors.

(5) Usually the peer-review time is 10 working days. Each peer-reviewer should put forward an overall comment of the manuscript as well as detailed comments about merits and/or problems of the manuscript.

(6) HPLPB appreciates all peer-reviewers for helping the journal to publish high quality papers. It also appreciate early notification from peer experts declining the invitation of review for some reason, thus it can invite potential reviewers as soon as possible.

HPLPB already has a peer-review team of about 2000 experts, among which 500 or so are active, and more than 100 are core peer-reviewers. The HPLPB peer-reviewers are experts, scholars and significant researchers from important national research institutes, key laboratories and outstanding universities—the Project 211 Universities and the Project 985 Universities. The HPLPB core peer-reviewers are necessarily academic leaders, authoritative experts and frontline researchers of the relating fields.