Peer Review

All submissions will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer-review evaluation process before the final decision is made. At all stages of the review process, until the decision to accept has been taken, authors’ and reviewers’ identities are concealed from each other.

The Editorial Board may exercise their prerogative to reject a manuscript without peer review if that manuscript is judged to be outside the scope of the Journal, poorly written or formatted or lacking significance.

Reviewers are matched to the manuscript according to their expertise. They are selected from the Journal’s reviewers’ data bank. If a manuscript is found to be of suitable quality and meets the aims and scope of the Journal, it will then be sent to at least two reviewers. The reviewers selected by the Editor may, of course, not necessarily be from the data bank. The Journal also welcomes suggestions for reviewers from authors, though these recommendations may or may not be used.

After receiving a request for peer review, reviewers must respond in a timely fashion, particularly if they cannot do the review, to avoid unnecessarily delaying the process.

Reviewers are tasked to evaluate a manuscript for its originality and significance of contribution, subject relevancy, appropriate coverage of existing literature, the presentation of methodology, results and interpretation, and manuscript organisation. Reviewers are also required to provide anonymous comments to the author and confidential comments to the Editor.

As a peer-reviewed international journal the evaluation process is often lengthy, therefore, allow a conservative estimate of between three to five months before a formal result is announced. The decision the Editor will make after consideration of the reviewers’ evaluations is one of the following:

1. Accept – This means the manuscript has undergone a rigorous reviewing process and the authors have made the required changes and modifications. Thus, it will be published by the journal. and does not require any changes or modifications.
   
   
2. Minor or major revision – In this case, the authors are given an opportunity to address the referees’ concerns by submitting a revised manuscript, which is usually sent back to the original referees for re-review. When submitting a revision, the following should be uploaded to the online submission system: (a) a point-by-point rebuttal letter indicating how the comments raised by the reviewers have been addressed. In the case that some comments cannot be addressed, your rebuttal letter provides you the opportunity to justify this; (b) a marked-up version of the manuscript that highlights the changes made and (c) a ‘clean’ (non-highlighted) version of the manuscript.
   
   
3. Reject – This decision is made for manuscripts which fail to meet the high standards of our journal. If the work has potential despite its current limitations, the Editor may express interest in seeing a future resubmission. However, if the authors decide to resubmit, the updated version of the manuscript must be submitted online as a new manuscript, with a cover letter that includes a point-by-point response to referees’ comments.