Horizon of Public Health Sciences (HoPHS) uses independent double-blind peer review to evaluate the scientific validity, methodological rigor, relevance, originality, reporting quality, and ethical integrity of scholarly manuscripts. Peer review informs editorial decisions but does not transfer decision-making authority from the journal's editors.

In the HoPHS double-blind model, reviewers are not provided with author names or affiliations, and authors are not informed of reviewer identities. Authors are therefore required to submit an anonymized main manuscript separately from the Title Page. Reviewers should not attempt to identify authors.

HoPHS does not select reviewers solely on the basis of author suggestions. The handling editor independently determines whether a proposed reviewer is suitable and may use reviewers not suggested by the authors. Authors may identify individuals with whom a genuine conflict exists, but exclusion requests are considered rather than automatically granted.

Invited reviewers must disclose any circumstance that could reasonably affect, or be perceived to affect, the independence of their assessment. This may include recent collaboration, a close professional or personal relationship, shared institutional affiliation, supervisory relationships, financial interests, academic competition, or strong involvement in the work under review.

A reviewer recommendation does not automatically determine the editorial outcome. Editors may reach a different decision when the manuscript evidence, journal policy, another expert assessment, or a reasoned reconciliation of conflicting reviewer reports supports that decision.

Authors invited to revise must submit a revised manuscript and a clear point-by-point response explaining how each editor and reviewer comment has been addressed. Where the authors disagree with a requested change, they should provide a reasoned scientific explanation rather than simply leaving the comment unanswered.

HoPHS does not prohibit editors or Editorial Board members from submitting scholarly work to the journal. Such manuscripts receive no preferential treatment and are subject to the same editorial standards, technical checks, similarity screening, and peer-review requirements as other submissions.

HoPHS aims to provide an initial editorial decision as efficiently as possible, with approximately 30 calendar days as the operational target for a standard externally reviewed manuscript. This target is not a guaranteed publication or decision time.

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a material error in the peer-review or editorial assessment affected the outcome. An appeal is not a mechanism for obtaining another review simply because the authors disagree with a scientifically reasoned decision.

HoPHS may suspend or modify the normal review pathway when concerns arise regarding plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated or falsified data, inappropriate image manipulation, authorship, ethics approval, reviewer identity, peer-review manipulation, undisclosed conflicts, or other potential research-integrity issues. Such matters are handled under the journal's publication-ethics procedures and may require additional information, expert assessment, or institutional consultation.

HoPHS is committed to a peer-review process that is fair, confidential, timely, evidence-based, free from inappropriate influence, and sufficiently transparent for authors, reviewers, readers, indexing services, and the wider scholarly community to understand how publication decisions are made.