Peer Review Process

Peer review: Given the centrality of peer review in specific academic affairs, it is with utmost care and responsibility that the whole process is carried out so that high-quality manuscripts are published. As a process, each submitted manuscript, once selected for review by the editors of the journal, goes through a rigorous and double-anonymized peer review. The review process involves the following steps and/or actions:

Electronic Submission: Following the call for papers, authors are required to send two Word versions of their manuscripts, one with their names, addresses, and affiliations, and another without. (The latter one is selected for the review process, which starts with a more administrative desk review.)  

Desk review: The desk review, which is overseen by the EIC (and carried by associate editors), involves checking for plagiarism, completeness in terms of the research elements, appropriateness in light of the scope of the journal, as well as layout and author guidelines. Accordingly, the manuscripts that need to proceed for formal peer review are selected

Peer reviewer assignment: After selecting the manuscripts for formal review, a pool of reviewers is selected, communicated, and assigned based on the subject matter and disciplinary expertise, as well as their consent to carry out the task within a specified time frame.

Peer review follow-up: Each manuscript, along with the necessary guidelines and reviewer’s checklist, is sent to a selected pair of reviewers. The EIC or any of the editors continue communications with the reviewers and the authors during the process. 

Peer review inspection: Each reviewer is required to submit a fair assessment report against set criteria as well as detailed constructive comments that can help to refine the manuscript. The editorial team inspects each report and makes a final decision to accept or reject a manuscript as well as subsequent author revisions.

Final touches: The double-anonymized peer review reports, along with a letter of acceptance or rejection are sent to each author who proceeds to subsequent actions as per the suggestions of the EIC. The authors of accepted manuscripts are then engaged in a series of actions to revise, edit, and resubmit the manuscript. (Depending on the reviewer’s report, a manuscript that undergoes author revisions may be sent back to the reviewer for confirmation.)  As part of an official declaration, an author (group of authors) needs to include sections that indicate that ethical statements (viz., Acknowledgments, contribution of authorship, data availability statement, declaration of the use of AI, funding statement, and declaration of conflict of interest) for publication.

As depicted above, the entire review process, the reports, and subsequent decisions are carefully overseen and managed.