Evaluation Process

All submissions are received by the Editorial Team, which verifies compliance with the journal's guidelines. During this process, texts undergo plagiarism detection through Turnitin software; the resulting Similarity Report provides complementary information to verify the manuscript's originality. Once the established criteria are met, submissions are forwarded to the Editors, who assess the text's relevance to the journal's scope and quality, deciding whether it should be sent for expert review or rejected. In the former case, two ad hoc reviewers are selected to evaluate the manuscript. They are asked to complete an evaluation form and indicate one of the following recommendations:

• Accept
• Revisions Required
• Reject

The peer review form is available here: Portuguese version; English version.

In the event of a divergence between reports, the Editors hold the final decision, which may include requesting a third reviewer or initiating a new round of evaluations after the author submits a revised version.

From 2026 onwards, in accordance with Open Science practices, RHAC will adopt a hybrid peer review process. That is, submitted manuscripts, with authorship kept confidential, will be forwarded to reviewers, who may choose whether or not to disclose their identity in the review. If an article is accepted for publication, the reviews will be published as supplementary material, with reviewers remaining anonymous or identified, according to their preference.

Over the last two years (2023–2025), the average evaluation time for submissions was approximately 60 days for the First Editorial Decision and 90 days for peer review. During this period, the Acceptance Rate for received submissions was 18%.