Journal policies

Peer review process

  • Submission of Paper - The corresponding or submitting author submits the paper to the journal. Anonymity is maintained as the Details of Authors, and the manuscript is only submitted using the Submission Form. The Manuscript does not contain any identification marks.
  • Editorial Office Assessment - The journal checks the paper’s composition and arrangement against its Submission Guidelines to ensure it includes the required sections and stylisations. At this point, the quality of the paper is not assessed.
  • Plagiarism Assessment - The journal team runs a plagiarism test to ensure that the manuscript does not contain any unauthorised version of someone else’s work. During the plagiarism check, the team ignores “Quotes” and “Footnoted/ Endnotes” content as they do not fall under the plagiarism definition.
  • Appraisal by the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) - The EIC checks that the paper is appropriate for the journal and sufficiently original and interesting. If not, it may be rejected without being reviewed further.
  • EIC Assigns an Associate Editor (AE) - Our journals have Associate Editors who handle the peer review. If they do, they will be assigned at this stage.
  • Invitation to Reviewers - The handling editor sends invitations to individuals he or she believes would be appropriate reviewers. As responses are received, further invitations are issued, if necessary, until the required number of acceptances is obtained – commonly, this is two, but there is some variation between journals.
  • Response to Invitations - Potential reviewers weigh the invitation against their expertise, conflicts of interest, and availability. They then accept or decline. If possible, when declining, they might also suggest alternative reviewers.
  • Review is conducted - The reviewer sets time aside to read the paper several times. The first read is used to form an initial impression of the work. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further work. Otherwise, they will read the paper several more times, taking notes to build a detailed Point-By-Point Review. After the Point-by-Point Review Phase, the papers are forwarded for a two-stage double-blind Peer Review. The Review is conducted in two stages, namely:
  • The Facts Check Stage: Our journal has a few fact-checkers on the editorial team who are solely responsible for cross-checking all the facts mentioned in the manuscript. The papers get rejected if the Facts Finder Team finds any contradicting facts. However, if minor changes are required, the Fact Finders are authorised to make such changes. Furthermore, the Reviewers are empowered to send the paper back to the author if major changes are required.
  • Once the Facts Finder Team is satisfied with the work, the same is forwarded to the Language Check Stage.
  • The Language Check Stage: In the Language Check Stage, the team generally checks the overall language of the manuscript along with Spelling Mistakes and grammatical Errors. The reviewers make all required changes.
  • The review is then submitted to the journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject it, or with a revision request (usually flagged as either major or minor) before reconsidering.
  • Journal Evaluates the Reviews - The handling editor considers all the returned reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer to provide an additional opinion.
  • The Decision is communicated. - The editor sends the author a decision email, including any relevant reviewer comments (in a personal one-on-one email communication if required). The comments are anonymous.
  • Final Publication - If accepted, the paper is sent to production. If the article is rejected or sent back for major or minor revision, the handling editor should include constructive reviewer comments to help the author improve the article. At this point, reviewers should also be sent an email or letter letting them know the outcome of their review. If the paper was returned for revision, the reviewers should expect to receive a new version unless they have opted out of further participation. However, where only minor changes were requested, the handling editor might do this follow-up review.
  • Post-publication review - In Post-Publication Review, the option for appraisal and revision of a paper continues—or occurs—after publication. This may be a comments page or discussion forum alongside the published paper. Crucially, post-publication peer review does not exclude other forms of peer review and is usually in addition to, rather than in place of, pre-publication review. The Journal’s Editorial Team is authorised to change the published manuscript even after publication if deemed necessary for quality control purposes.