Peer Review Process

Description

Submissions should be prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines. The manuscript may be returned to authors without a scientific assessment if they do not meet all submission requirements, if they are not in the correct format, or cannot be downloaded reliably.

Submissions must represent the original and independent work of the authors. Each new submission is assessed by Editor in Chief using Manuscript Readiness Level (MRL) to determine whether it falls within the general remit of InJoES. We will reject a manuscript without review if it contains insufficient content; it exceeds our word limit or is incorrectly formatted; it is poorly presented and unclear. Manuscripts that pass the initial assessment will be handled by Editor in Chief or Associate Editor to oversee the review process for contribution, originality, relevance, and presentation.

Once a manuscript passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to at least two independent experts for peer-review. A double-blind review is applied, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. Peer review comments are confidential and will only be disclosed with the express agreement of the reviewer. All manuscripts are subject to peer review and authors can expect a decision, or an explanation for the delay, within 2 months of receipt. If a revision is invited, the corresponding author should submit the revised manuscript within 2 weeks. The final decision is taken by Principal Editors based on the information gained through the peer-review process.

We ensure that the reviewed manuscript is treated confidentially prior to being published, as explained in publication ethics.

Stages of the Review Process

Every submission passes through the following stages in the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform. Each stage is recorded in the system and can be verified by the editorial office.

1. Submission and technical check. The editorial office checks completeness, format, and compliance with the Author Guidelines.
2. Initial assessment and similarity screening. The Editor in Chief assesses scope and readiness using the Manuscript Readiness Level (MRL), and the managing editor screens the manuscript for similarity (see Similarity Check below).
3. Assignment to an editor. A manuscript that passes the initial checks is assigned to the Editor in Chief or an Associate Editor, who oversees the review.
4. Double-blind peer review. At least two independent reviewers are invited and submit their reports through OJS. Author and reviewer identities are concealed from each other.
5. Editorial decision. The editor makes a decision based on the reviewer reports (see Types of decision) and communicates it to the author through OJS together with the reviewers' comments.
6. Revision and further review. Revised manuscripts are checked against the point-by-point response and may be sent for another round of review.
7. Acceptance, production, and publication. Accepted manuscripts are copyedited, typeset, proofread by the author, and published online with a DOI.

Reviewer Qualifications and Number of Reviewers

Each manuscript sent for review is assessed by at least two independent reviewers. The handling editor invites a third reviewer when the first two reports disagree substantially or when additional expertise is needed.

Reviewers are selected according to the following requirements:

• Demonstrated expertise in the subject area of the manuscript, shown by recent publications (preferably within the last three years) in international journals or accredited national journals, and normally a doctoral degree or equivalent research experience.
• No authorship of, or conflict of interest with, the manuscript: reviewers must not be co-authors, close collaborators of the past three years, or members of the same institution as any author.
• A person who acts as handling editor of a manuscript does not act as a reviewer of that manuscript.
• Reviewers come from several countries, and their names and affiliations are published with their consent on the Peer-Reviewers Acknowledgement page.

Review Criteria

Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript against the following criteria and to give specific, constructive comments for each of them:

• Relevance to the Focus and Scope of the journal.
• Originality and contribution: novelty and clearly stated research gap relative to the existing literature.
• Soundness of the research design, methods, data, and analysis, including reproducibility.
• Quality of the results, discussion, and interpretation, and whether the conclusions are supported by the evidence.
• Adequacy, accuracy, and currency of the literature and references, and correct attribution of sources.
• Structure, clarity, language, and quality of tables and figures.
• Research ethics: permissions, consent, data availability, and declarations (including the declaration on the use of AI).

Each reviewer ends the report with a recommendation: accept submission, revisions required, resubmit for review, or decline submission.

Review Timeline

• Reviewers are asked to accept or decline a review invitation within 2 weeks.
• Reviewers are asked to submit their report within 4 weeks after accepting. OJS sends automatic reminders when a due date has passed, and the editor may agree to a short extension or appoint another reviewer.
• Authors can expect a decision, or an explanation for the delay, within 2 months of receipt.
• Authors invited to revise should return the revised manuscript within 2 weeks.

Similarity Check

All manuscripts are screened for plagiarism and self-plagiarism before review, as described on the Plagiarism Screening page. The managing editor decides, based on the level of originality, whether to reject the manuscript, to ask the authors for clarification, or to proceed to peer review. Reviewers who suspect overlap with other work or duplicate publication must report it to the editor.

Editorial Decision-Making

• Decisions are taken by the Editor in Chief or the principal editors on the basis of the reviewer reports and the editor's own assessment. Reviewers advise; they do not decide.
• Editors who have a conflict of interest with a manuscript, including editors who are authors of it, are excluded from its handling and from the decision, and the manuscript is assigned to another editor.
• Authors who disagree with a decision may submit a reasoned appeal to the Editor in Chief, which is handled following COPE guidance on appeals.
• Editorial decisions are never delegated to, or based solely on, the output of an AI tool.

Confidentiality, Conflicts of Interest, and Use of AI by Reviewers

• Manuscripts and review reports are confidential. Reviewers must not share, discuss, or use unpublished material without permission.
• Reviewers must declare any competing interest and decline the invitation when they cannot review impartially.
• Reviewers must not use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to analyse, assess, or write review comments, and must not enter the manuscript or any part of it into an AI application. See the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy.

Ethical Standards of Peer Review

The review process follows the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers and COPE's Core Practices for editors, as summarised in our Publication Ethics statement. Suspected misconduct in review or authorship is handled according to the relevant COPE flowcharts.

Types of decision

There are four types of editorial decisions during the peer review process, which are:

Decline submission   |   Resubmit for review   |   Revision   |   Accept submission

Decline submission

Following peer review, the paper is judged not to be acceptable for publication in InJoES and resubmission is not possible.

Resubmit for Review

The submitted version of the paper is not acceptable and requires major revision, but there is clear potential in the work, and InJoES is prepared to consider a new version. Authors are offered the opportunity to resubmit their paper as a new submission. Concerns will remain regarding the suitability of the paper for publication until the editors are convinced by the authors that their paper fits the scope and standards of InJoES. The resubmitted manuscript will be returned to the original associate editor if at all possible.

Revision

The paper requires changes before a final decision can be made. Authors are asked to modify their manuscript in light of comments received from referees and editors and to submit a new version for consideration within 2 weeks of receiving the decision letter. A point-by-point explanation of how comments have been addressed must be supplied with the revised version of the paper. Revisions may undergo further peer review and papers may undergo more than one round of revision. If the authors do not revise their papers to the satisfaction of the editors, the paper can still be declined from publication in InJoES.

Accept submission

The paper is accepted for publication, subject to conditions that need to be addressed in producing a final version of the manuscript. These may include sub-editing changes and the minor amendment to ensure the paper fully matches our criteria. After final checking in the editorial office, acceptance is confirmed and the paper is forwarded to the publishers for publication.

Galley proof

Page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author for final checking. Corrections to the proofs must be restricted to printer’s errors: any other changes to the text, in equations or grammar, may be charged to the author. Proofs should be returned to the editors within three days of receipt to minimize the risk of the author’s contribution having to be held over to a later issue. The editors do not accept responsibility for the correctness of published content. It is the author’s responsibility to check the content at the proof stage.

InJoES Editorial and publishing process

InJoES follow the editorial and publishing process set by PKP, as presented in the following figure.