Question

what process takes place before an article is published in a scientific journal ?

Answer 1

Depends of the journal, and depends if you are referring to a manuscript already written and ready to be submitted. Or if you are talking about all the experiments that you have to do before even write the manuscript.
If you are talking about the last step in the publication process this person in yahoo published a pretty complete answer a time ago. The process can be more simple or more complex depending of the journal requirements.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100825160345AAXDu5e

marqueen71 answered 4 years ago
ACTUALLY lots of graduate students do publish. You do NOT have to be a University Professor.

You submit the article to the journal. The EDITOR sends the article to several others who are familiar with that type of research (peer reviewed articles). They comment on the article and recommend to the editor to either publish, publish with certain changes, or not publish.

The Editor returns the article and comments to the author and after lots of back and forth, it may eventually be published.