Peer review process

AND – Architetture, città e architetti adopts a rigorous double-blind peer review process.
Each submission is evaluated by at least two external reviewers, selected on the basis of specific disciplinary expertise, independent from both the Editorial Board and the authors.

The review process ensures impartiality, transparency, and scientific quality, according to criteria of originality, methodological rigor, clarity of exposition, proper use of references, and contribution to the scientific debate.
Authors receive the reviewers’ comments in full, in order to foster improvement of the manuscripts and guarantee maximum transparency of the process.


AND adopts the double-blind peer review process. Reviewers are selected according to their specific expertise.
In particular, articles hosted in scientific journals are commonly subject to submission, acceptance, and peer review procedures within the relevant scientific communities.
In general, peer review provides a form of “quality check” through a system of “evaluation among peers” entrusted to anonymous researchers (referees) within the scientific community, who read and, when appropriate, propose revision suggestions to the contributions of other researchers.
The Editorial Board then submits each article (without indicating the author’s name) to two anonymous referees acting as readers for peer review.
The review reports, the outcome of the peer review process, are sent to the Editorial Board and then forwarded to the authors, without revealing the identity of the referees.

Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript according to the following criteria:

  • Originality
  • Relevance to the aims and scope of the journal
  • Cultural and/or technical merit and validity
  • Soundness of the methodology
  • Completeness of the reported work
  • Conclusions supported by data
  • Proper acknowledgement of related work through references
  • Effectiveness of the manuscript (organization and writing)
  • Clarity of tables, figures, and illustrations

If the article is accepted with major revisions requested by the reviewers, the author(s) will be invited to improve the article according to the reviewers’ suggestions. The revised article will then be subject to an additional review.
After collecting the reviewers’ reports, the editors make a recommendation on the article’s acceptability to the Editor-in-Chief.


The peer review system is organized as follows:

  • Submission: The files containing the proposed articles are received by the Editorial Board at the email address indicated in the call for papers. The editors of the journal and the guest editors of the issue are responsible for initiating the review process by assigning the articles to reviewers. For communications regarding the progress of the procedure, the editors will use the email address from which the proposal was submitted.
  • First and second opinions: are provided by anonymous reviewers selected among PhD holders, researchers, and tenured university professors specializing in the subjects addressed in the call for papers. The opinions are based on both content-related and formal criteria, requiring reviewers to complete the journal’s peer review evaluation form. If necessary, at the judgment of the second reviewers and when a specific selection of contributions is required, articles may be submitted to a third and final opinion.
  • Third opinion: is provided by university professors specializing in the subjects addressed in the call for papers, on the basis of both content-related and formal criteria. The third reviewer’s opinion is final and binding for the acceptance of the contribution.

The peer review reports will be sent by the reviewers to the editorial manager in written form. The guest editors of the issue will then contact the authors via the submission email, informing them of the review outcome (accepted / accepted with revisions / rejected), along with the anonymous summary evaluations of the two/three reviewers and the dates of receipt of the reports.
According to the reviewers’ recommendations, authors may be required to make editorial or content changes that do not compromise the originality of the work.
Accepted contributions will be published in AND.
The reviewers’ reports will be communicated (both for accepted and rejected contributions) exclusively and privately to the authors at their email address.


The peer review process adopted by AND complies with international standards of scientific quality (COPE, DOAJ, Scopus, WoS).