Peer Review Process and Standard for Journal

1. Submission of Paper

Make calls for paper submission (use your profile page on www.boldscholar.com, and our news blog www.boldscholarnews.com, or any other means you may find necessary). The corresponding or submitting author submits the paper to the journal (the Editorial Board). This could be via your journal email, or another email we shall provide you later in our correspondences.
 

2. Editorial Office Assessment

The journal (Editorial Board) checks the paper’s composition and arrangement against the journal’s Author Guidelines to make sure it includes the required sections and stylizations. The quality of the paper is not assessed at this point.

3. Appraisal by the Editor-in-Chief (EIC)

The EIC checks that the paper is appropriate for the journal and is sufficiently original and interesting, using plagiarism checkers like Turnitin or Grammarly. If not, the paper may be rejected without being reviewed any further. The author or contributor must be notified accordingly via email. 

4. Editor in Chief (EIC) Assigns an Associate Editor (AE)

Some journals have Associate Editors who handle the peer review. If they do, they would be assigned at this stage. Commonly, two Reviewers are enough, but you may choose to increase the number.

5. Reviewers

Reviewers should consider the invitation against their own expertise, conflicts of interest and availability. They may accept or decline. If possible, when declining, request that they suggest alternative Reviewers.

6. 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 so as to build a detailed point-by-point review. The review is then submitted to the journal (Editorial Board), with a recommendation to accept or reject it – or else with a request for revision (usually flagged as either major or minor) before it is reconsidered.

7. Journal (Editorial Board) Evaluates the Reviews

The Handling Editor (EIC or AE) considers all the returned reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer so as to get an extra opinion before making a decision.

8. The Decision is Communicated

The Editor sends a decision email to the author, including any relevant reviewer comments. Whether the comments are anonymous or not will depend on the type of peer review that the journal operates.

9. Next Steps

If accepted, the paper is sent to production. If the article is rejected or sent back for either major or minor revision, the Handling Editor should include constructive comments from the Reviewers 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 sent back 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 this follow-up review might be done by the Handling Editor.

Please Note: 

Let the Reviewers understand that they are representing the readers of the journal. The question that ought to be at the back of their minds is, ‘‘Will the readers of this particular journal find this informative and useful?’’

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