Peer Review Process

Each manuscript is reviewed by the Editors, and if of a sufficient standard, sent for blinded reviewed by at least two Editorial Board members who come from a range of countries as chosen by the journal team based on their expertise (double-blind peer review). The result may be accepted with no correction, accepted with little correction, accepted with many corrections and refused. The sending author is given opportunity to correct the article on the basis of suggestion received from the reviewer. Certain information of whether the article is accepted and published or refused is given to the sending author in written.

Blind reviewing will be applied and at least two reviewers will be assigned for each submitted paper. Author(s) are allowed to propose appropriate reviewers by providing their names and email addresses, but the decision remains in the hand of editor. Authors are suggested to use plagiarism detection software to check similarity of the manuscript. This similarity checking and screening is conducted using Turnitin. Decision will be made based on the level of similarities with other articles. The editor will decide on either immediately reject the manuscripts, contact authors for further clarifications, or to proceed to the peer-review process. Final decision is made by editor and editorial board.

In short, the steps are:

  1. Manuscript Submission (by author)
  2. Manuscript Check and Selection (by manager and editors). Editors have a right to directly accept, reject, or review. Prior to further processing steps, plagiarism check using Turnitin is applied for each manuscript.
  3. Manuscript Reviewing Process (by Reviewers).
  4. Notification of Manuscript Acceptance, Revision, or Rejection (by editor to author based on reviewers comments).
  5. Paper Revision (by author)
  6. Revision Submission based on Reviewer Suggestion (by author).
  7. If the reviewer seems to be satisfied with revision, notification for acceptance (by editor).
  8. Galley proof and publishing process.

The steps point number 1 to 5 are considered as 1 round of the peer-reviewing process (see the grey area in the figure). The editor or editorial board considers the feedback provided by the peer reviewers and arrives at a decision. The following are the most common decisions:

  • Accepted, as it is. The journal will publish the paper in its original form;
  • Accepted by Minor Revisions, the journal will publish the paper and asks the author to make small corrections (let authors revised with stipulated time);
  • Accepted by Major Revisions, the journal will publish the paper provided the authors make the changes suggested by the reviewers and/or editors (let authors revised with stipulated time);
  • Resubmit (conditional rejection), the journal is willing to reconsider the paper in another round of decision making after the authors make major changes;
  • Rejected (outright rejection), the journal will not publish the paper or reconsider it even if the authors make major revisions.